Johnny Depp and Maiwenn at the Cannes premiere of Jeanne du Barry. Photo: WireImage
Johnny Depp's return to the spotlight at this year's Cannes Film Festival The film festival has usually been the main topic of the day, not least because Cannes boss Thierry Fremaux – in comments that may have been less helpful than he intended – declared of Depp's reappearance: If there is one person in this world who does not find the least interest in this highly publicized test, it is me. I don't know what it's about. I also care about Johnny Depp as an actor.”
Rejecting suggestions that Depp's presence somehow legitimized sexual harassment, he told the press: “If you thought this was a holiday for rapists, you wouldn't be listening to me here, you wouldn't be complaining that you couldn't get tickets to to screenings,” Fremaux nonetheless felt compelled to suggest that the journalists were addressing their comments to a figure even more controversial than the beleaguered actor. It will be Maiwenn Le Besco (simply known as Maiwenn), director of Depp's new film Jeanne du Barry.
It's fair to say that most filmmakers, if they were going to present a big-budget epic about the relationship between Louis XV and his mistress at Cannes, wouldn't try to attract distracting headlines with the energy that Maiwenn has.
However, as one of the most talked about figures in France, she has never shied away from publicity, whether good or bad, and her latest exploits seem to be just about right. In March, she allegedly attacked Edwi Plenel, editor-in-chief of an online investigative newspaper, in a restaurant by walking up to his table, throwing his head back at him, spitting in his face, and then walking out of the room without saying anything more. .
Plenel suggested that the attack was “damage on a moral and psychological level” and that he was “very traumatized” by the event. However, Maiwenn took it lightheartedly. When she appeared on the talk show Quotidien, she cheerfully denied any possibility of her innocence. “Am I confirming that I attacked him? Yes, she said. (Plainel sues her for damages.) Maiwenn then declined to discuss it further: “Now is not the time. I'll tell you about it when I'm ready. I'm very worried about the release of my film.”
Long before the premiere and release of Jeanne du Barry at Cannes in France, rumors circulated that Depp and his director were at odds during filming, and as a result, she cut out most of his dialogue. She half denied it: “For me, as someone who wants a less talkative film, it is exciting to see everything that Johnny conveys with his face, with his eyes. Like a silent actor.
However, she also admitted in an interview with Premiere magazine that collaborations between the two can often be tricky. “Johnny is a star, a king… and an American!” She said. “I was told not to let him know that we were waiting for him to shoot the scene, I was not allowed to knock on the door of his dressing room. Once I did it. And there he made it clear to me that I had made an unacceptable intrusion and asked me how I would feel if he knocked on my dressing room door. I replied that everyone does it all the time. Because that’s how sets work in France!”
She also suggested that some of the tension that developed between the two was due to cultural clashes. “I realized that in the United States, stars don't really direct,” she told the magazine. “They explain to the director how they are going to act out the scene, and the director follows the flow. But in France the director is the boss. So for each take, I obviously filmed his sentences, but I also asked him to interpret my own vision so that we had a choice during editing. He was ready for it.”
Maiwenn and Luc Besson in 1995. Photo: Sigma. but no doubt the film's press conference will be interesting to say the least.
Yet contradiction was to Maiwenn what daffodils were to Wordsworth. She first appeared before the public when she began her career as an actress as a child, allegedly at the behest of her mother, of whom she said: “She is poison to me … she poisoned my life.” She met the all-powerful French director and producer Luc Besson when she was 12 and he was 29; they began a relationship when Maiwenn was 15, married when she was 16, and had a daughter that same year.
If that's not enough, Besson has repeatedly said that the relationship between Jean Reno's hitman and schoolgirl Natalie Portman in his 1994 film Léon was inspired by his own relationship with Maiwenn; those who want to know more about their marriage should watch the extended director's cut, which contains a distinctly sickening scene in which Portman's character asks the eponymous killer to take her virginity. The actress was then 12 years old.
Maiwenn Le Besco at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Photo: WireImage
Maiwenn herself confirmed that there is an autobiographical element to the film, saying, “When Luc Besson made Léon, the story of a 12-year-old girl in love with an older man, we were very inspired by it, as it was written at the time we started. But no media outlets made the link.” She described the film as “this love story between a 12-year-old girl and a 30-year-old man, [which] was still very inspired by ours.”
Although Maiwenn and Besson broke up a few years later, after he met actress Milla Jovovich on the set of the space epic The Fifth Element, in which his ex-wife played an eight-foot blue alien opera singer, she continues to maintain a friendship. with him, and it has been suggested that she attacked Plenelle because of Mediapart's stories of Besson being accused of being raped by multiple women. (None of the allegations have been substantiated.)
In an interview with Harper's Bazaar promoting Jeanne du Barry, she drew parallels between Louis XV's relationship with Jeanne and her relationship with Besson: “When I was younger, I was with a man who had power in cinema,” she said. “I remember, as if it were yesterday, the severity of the looks on me, the silence that spoke volumes. I was even told words and comments, long before the end of this story, that touched me deeply. Especially since I was with him out of interest. As if there could be no love, sincere love, between a young working-class girl and a man of power. As if everything has to be perverted. Versailles can be a metaphor for filmmakers. I felt it strongly until I made my own films.”
Maiwenn with Johnny Depp in Jeanne du Barry
Of course, those who see Maiwenn as a feminist icon and role model are likely to be disappointed. Although she has achieved great acclaim as a director, winning the Jury Prize at Cannes for her 2011 film Polis, a crime drama about the child protection unit of the Parisian police, she is quite dismissive of many of today's thorny issues. Not only did she criticize feminists as “women who don't like men,” she also treated supporters of the #MeToo movement with the same disdain. “I understand that women who are abused by men are often fragile women,” she told Paris Match. “Now I, if I agree to go to the men's room at 1 am, I suspect it's not to talk about the role.”
However, she is also fiercely proud of what she has accomplished in her career, speaking of the similarities between her and Jeanne: “I have a lot in common with her. She left school at 15, as did I. She was very inquisitive, with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, just like me. She needed to be admired, to be accepted… For all these reasons, I feel close to her.”
So far, her film has received a somewhat muted reception. But whether a masterpiece, a flop or something in between, Maiwenn is likely to continue to be one of the most talked about figures in contemporary French cinema. Compared to her, even the notorious Depp is likely to remain second fiddle. And that, as you suspect, is exactly what she likes.
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