Farewell, My Queen

In person: Director Benoît Jacquot for both screenings!

Direct from its World Premiere as Opening Night at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, the new film from director Benoît Jacquot (A Single Girl, Deep in the Woods) brilliantly captures the passions, debauchery, occasional glimpses of nobility and ultimately the chaos that engulfed the court of Marie Antoinette in the final days before the full-scale outbreak of the Revolution. Based on the best-selling novel by Chantal Thomas, the film stars Léa Seydoux as one of Marie’s ladies-in-waiting, seemingly an innocent but quietly working her way into her mistress’s special favors, until history tosses her fate onto a decidedly different path. As the action moves effortlessly between the gilded drawing rooms of the nobles and the back quarters of those who serve them, rarely has a period film felt no only so accurate but so positively lived in. Diane Kruger is simply terrific as the ill-fated Queen and Virginie Ledoyen, as the Queen’s special friend Gabrielle de Polignac, gives her finest performance in years.