Madame de Pompadour: The King’s Favorite – Jeanne Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (2006)

Directed by: Robin Davis | 180 minutes | drama, history | Actors: Hélène de Fougerolles, Vincent Perez, Rosemarie La Vaullée, Charlotte de Turckheim, Damien Jouillerot, Charlotte Valandrey, Jennifer Decker, Chloé Stefani, Léa Wiazemsky, Romain Redler, Elisabeth Margoni, Yvon Back, Jean-François Garreaud, Benoît Soles, Christian Hecq, Patrick Haudecoeur, Wilfred Benaïche, Jean-François Dérec, Patrick Raynal, Albert Goldberg, Jean-Louis Foulquier, Emmanuel Ambroise, Alban Aumard, Yan Brian, Jacques Ciron, Stéphane Comby, Judith Davis, Serge Davis, Xavier De Guillebon, Marie Favasuli, Alexandre Ganse, François Guillaume, Hervé Jacobi, Marine Laporte, Alice Lautner, Alice Lhermitte, Marc Michel, Bertrand Nadler, Antoine Nakab, Joël Ravon, Marie-France Santon, Diane Stolojan, Emmanuel Suarez, Johanna Vannucci, Venantino Venantini, Matthias Weber

Pleasant and light-hearted historical drama, which is a feast for the real fans of French costume films for three hours. Although the DVD title states otherwise, ‘Jeanne Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour’ was made for French television as a two-part miniseries. Due to this set-up, the events are widely spun out, which does not really help the pace. But the fine acting of Hélène de Fougerolles as the ambitious Jeanne Poisson and Vincent Perez as the indecisive King Louis the Fifteenth, drags the viewer through a few dead moments. The pair interact well and their decades-long relationship (even though they don’t really age much in the roughly twenty years that the miniseries spans) comes across as natural and believable.

Although the opening, in which Jeanne deliberately enters the king’s hunting grounds with her carriage to meet him, may seem far-fetched, it is a true incident. It was unheard of for her, a non-aristocratic subject, to position herself in this way towards the monarch. But with her beauty, charm, manners, and intelligence, she knew how to captivate more people. For example, she had her own salon where she entertained philosophers such as Voltaire (Jean-François Dérec) and Diderot. Her parentage was rather unusual, her father had to flee the country after a tax scandal and her mother (Elisabeth Margoni) was a well-known courtesan. Mother Poisson, in particular, urged her daughter to get as much out of the relationship with the king as possible before he set her aside. It was also whispered that Jeanne’s guardian Monsieur de Tournehem (Marc Michel) was actually her biological father. Such a history raised many eyebrows at court, especially with Lodewijk’s seven years older Polish queen Maria (Charlotte de Turckheim) and their children, the Dauphin (Damien Jouillerot) in the lead. This crown prince, also called Lodewijk, pretty much acts as the villain of the story. The role of the Dauphin is somewhat caricatured, with his outbursts of anger and obvious hatred for Jeanne. But his sisters Henriëtte (Chloé Stefani) and Adélaïde (Léa Wiazemsky) are also not indifferent. But the king doesn’t care much about this. He wants Jeanne and will have her too. Lodewijk was also only moderately interested in affairs of state and went down in history as one of France’s most unpopular monarchs. Partly because he relied heavily on the behind the scenes operating Jeanne for advice. Soon she was given a noble title as Marquise de Pompadour and presented at the court at Versailles. But especially the bad relationship with the royal family casts a shadow on their relationship. Henriëtte even makes her father promise the king on her deathbed that he must cast off “his whore”. And so the court intrigues pile up, all with the aim of wresting the king from La Pompadour. And because of that constant jump-off, the arch-doubter Lodewijk doesn’t know it all anymore and the only thing he was sure of, starts to crumble. As has been entrusted to the French, the decoration looks fantastic. Some scenes at Versailles were shot and the costumes look beautiful. It’s also an idyllic kind of France that the makers show, where the weather is always nice and the hilly landscape comes into its own.

‘Jeanne Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour’ has hidden some small history lessons here and there in the storyline and not just because the characters were existing historical figures. Despite the light tone, the miniseries is certainly not superficial, but a pleasant and excellent production. Interestingly, Hélène de Fougerolles also played Madame de Pompadour in the film ‘Fanfan la Tulipe’ (2003) and her co-star Vincent Perez did not play King Louis in that film, but took on the role of Fanfan.