Cannes: Maïwenn & Johnny Depp in "Jeanne Du Barry"

Elisa Giudici reporting from Cannes!

It is fascinating how carelessly Maïwenn gives her detractors such easy targets and ways to tear apart her work. She is the director, screenwriter, and lead actress of Cannes opener Jeanne Du Barry. The biopic takes place in Versailles in the years when both the old king Louis XV and the young and naive future queen Marie Antoinette walked through the halls and the gardens of the magnificent French court. The focus here though is elsewhere. The film centers on the elderly king's favorite, the low-born, sensual, and witty Jeanne. Multi-hyphenate Maïwenn shares Jeanne's giggly confidence, playing the protagonist with Johnny Depp as the aging Louis XV.

If you're thinking of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, you’re not alone. It’s the same realm of extreme luxury, absurd etiquette, and incredible loneliness, but viewed from a different side of the royal playground... 

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Finally in theaters... a review catch-up

From the team...

Every week there are multiple films opening that someone on Team Film Experience has reviewed at a festival either a couple of months earlier or sometimes more than a full year prior. We'll try to do a better job of alerting you to those films that might have piqued your interest the first time you read about them from festival coverage. In the past few weeks the following seven films have all opened in theaters. Some are much harder to find then others but here is a note on each of them... 

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Review: "Are You There God? It's Me Margaret." Is So Good, it Transcends its Genre

By Ben Miller

I am not a woman.  I did not grow up with any sisters. My personal experience never crossed paths with Judy Blume books.  All that being said, Kelly Fremon Craig's (The Edge of Seventeen) film adaptation of Blume's classic bestseller Are You There God? It's Me Margaret. transcends any genre bias to you might bring to it. It's one of the best films of the year so far.

The film centers on Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson), a sixth-grader who moves to New Jersey from New York with her parents (Rachel McAdams, Benny Safdie).  Margaret is not only at a transitional period in life with the move, but on the brink of puberty and all that comes with it.  If that wasn't enough, Margaret finds herself on a quest to find God, stuck between the Christian and Jewish faiths...

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Review: Virginie Efira is miraculous in "Other People's Children"

by Cláudio Alves

Watching Rebecca Zlotowski's Other People's Children, I was reminded of a discussion I once had with a professor. Despite the class focusing on theater, we talked about cinema and what stories deserve to have the camera pointed at them. In short, we debated the merits of dramatizing ordinary people. For me, there's plenty of interest in exploring individuals whose lives are entirely un-dramatic, maybe even anti-dramatic. Great art can be created by investigating the complexities of the simplest-seeming experiences. Just because something appears anodyne or common doesn't mean there aren't beguiling specificities or that we should be above it. My professor disagreed.

At the time, a great deal of the conversation centered around the films of Chantal Akerman, but Zlotowski's latest effort feels like an up-to-date if more conventional, example. Indeed, I imagine my former pedagogue would hate the thing if he ever set eyes on Other People's Children…

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TV Musicals: Schmigadoon (Apple TV+) & Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies (Paramount+)

By Christopher James

TV is embracing the musical. Just this week, two new musical series premiered on different streaming services - season two of Schmigadoon (now tackling 60s/70s darker musicals) on Apple TV+ and Grease: The Rise of the Pink Ladies on Paramount+. Both series use previous musical IP as a launching pad for new stories, one a parody and one an “origin story.” While the level of success varies between the shows (hell, sometimes it varies episode-to-episode), it is wonderful to see new musicals with original songs streaming on our TVs in the same week...

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