The American mainstream media seems to be going out of its collective minds over the positive reception to Johnny Depp’s reception at the Cannes Film Festival, although to be honest it is coming mainly from people who have some kind of grudge against men in general—and those who are trying to stay on their “good” side. Most people, of course, find it safer to keep their opinions to themselves.
But then again, film reviewers have a job to do, even if films are generally much less interesting and daring than they were, say, in the Seventies, when you didn’t need CGI effects in place of a coherent plot line to reveal the world as being controlled by sinister forces (unlike a world as an ongoing Three Stooges marathon, like the Republican “investigative” committees have been).
So what does the website Rotten Tomatoes tell us about the critical reception of French director Maïwenn’s Jeanne du Barry, which opened the Cannes Film Festival to a more than warm reception to both the film and especially Depp, which shouldn’t surprise anyone, given that the Virginia trial proved that when you have lied to people for years the whirlwind can be unforgiving, while support for the true victim comes out stronger:
You haven’t seen anyone confronting Depp in public with hateful nonsense, only fans asking for selfies, a kiss or an autograph. On the other hand, Heard has been mostly a media “curiosity” when she hasn’t merely been ignored by those she encounters on her occasional shopping expeditions.
People were not as impressed by Heard’s “performances” that were distinctly at odds with the “character” we heard in those audio clips, which revealed a person whose character was more in line with those smirking expressions we constantly saw from her at the U.S. trial. Forget social media; people liked Depp, and they didn’t like Heard and the hate-filled, unlikable “friends" who hadn't abandoned her yet because they were all about their own self-obsessed "politics"; for those on the “fence,” the social media “influencers” did the job that the mainstream media refused to do: help people to understand why a jury would find the way it did.
Anyways, as of this writing, Jeanne du Barry has a “rotten” score based on 31 reviews, which it gives to films with less than 60 percent “positive” reviews, and “only” 16 of the reviews are positive. Since the film has not been released in the U.S., there are no reviews (yet) by the major media outlets or newspapers; perhaps they are “boycotting” the film, but it shouldn’t be expected that they would review films that no one is going to be able to see in this country in theaters or television anyways.
The question to be answered in regard to the reviews is if they will be “fair,” or will those reviewers with pro-Heard, anti-Depp feelings go into the film looking for anything to damn it simply because Depp is in it. Indeed, Variety’s surprisingly positive review (given the publication’s pro-Heard slant) by Peter DeBruge suggests this is the case when he admits that “The critics will come with knives sharpened.”
Maïwenn, he admits, is not a filmmaker who cares about “pleasing” critics. The film is “a sensitive and surprisingly low-key portrait of the French monarch’s last mistress,” and “demands to be taken seriously. As the end credits rolled, an older woman openly wept behind me, taking several minutes to pull herself together. Clumsy as the film can be, Maïwenn taps into the emotional core of a most unusual relationship, such that we mourn how and why it eventually dissolves.”
The review by Richard Lawson in Vanity Fair, also a pro-Heard stans publication, is generally positive, but he seems compelled to take a swipe, stating that “Johnny Depp Is the Least Interesting Part of Jeanne du Barry.” On the other hand, Sarah Manvel of In their Own League calls Depp’s casting a “masterstroke,” if for no other reason than as a publicity gimmick to sell the film.
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, which has been strongly anti-Depp, apparently decided to keep his credibility intact by ignoring the politics and simply reviewing the film as is—meaning that he gives it a generally positive review as an “entertaining spectacle” while only slightly hedging his bets. Bradshaw does confess that the “spectacular casting” of Depp means that King Louis XV in this film can’t merely be an “unsexy old guy,”
In her positive review, Lisa Nesselson in Screen International also doesn’t mention the Depp/Heard issue, and calls Depp’s performance “consistently compelling.” Ema Sasic from Next Best Picture also ignores the scandals in her positive review, telling us that in her opinion
Maïwenn and Depp share plenty of great moments in the film, particularly ones that bring welcomed humor. In fact, the unexpected laughs, from deadpan glances from Depp’s King Louis XV to a running gag about how people should never turn their back to the King, are easily the best thing about the film. One that stands out follows Jeanne and the King’s first night together, where he showcases his absurd morning ritual and makes funny faces at Jeanne, who watches from another room. On the other hand, their romantic chemistry might not be all too convincing for some as Depp doesn’t give a fully all-there performance most of the time – he basically makes the same face the entire movie – although his attempt at doing it all in French should be commended.
The most positive review was by Geoffrey Macnab of the UK’s Independent, who called the film “great”:
Against the odds, Jeanne du Barry has turned out to be a subtle and well-crafted costume drama with plenty of satirical bite. It has more in common with Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon than it does Pirates of the Caribbean, with Depp giving one of his more restrained and effective performances as the king who falls in love with a courtesan. His Louis is a taciturn, melancholy but commanding figure with a dark side…What Jeanne du Barry will do for Depp’s faltering reputation remains to be seen, but he gives a solid enough performance. This time, at least, the Cannes doom-mongers were wrong.
But of course there are the negative reviews, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they come in with “knives sharpened” to go after Depp. Many of the negative reviews came out of Spain; is the fact that Heard currently resides there influencing those reviews, one wonders? Someone named Angel Quintana has this despicable observation to make that immediately discredits the reviewer: “Maïwenn has always wanted to conquer the court of Cannes and this time she has been accompanied by a Johnny Depp bloated with barbiturates, who does not dare to speak too much French and who turns the monarch into a true puppet. A waste.”
Brazilian-born Rafaela Sales Ross, whose writing generally appears in UK publications, calls the film “An Unsalvageable Royal Drama.” It only takes until the second paragraph for the reviewer to tank her credibility completely:
A week before the opening ceremony, the director admitted to spitting on a journalist, an act the reporter believes to have been caused due to his publishing of an investigation into rape and sexual assault allegations against *Luc Besson*, to whom Maïwenn was married in the 90s. On top of this particular scandal, “Jeanne du Barry” led to the creation of the #CannesYouNot movement, led by *Amber Heard* supporters who protest Cannes’ highlighting of a film starring Johnny Depp less than a year after the grotesque domestic violence trial that pitted the American actor and his former wife into the greedy pits of tabloids and social media alike.
Anything she has to say about the film after this has to be looked through the prism of her hatred, not any by any objective standards.
The Hollywood Reporter has been a pro-Heard stans, but its negative review confines itself to simply stating that casting “the semi-blacklisted Depp” should have elevated the film from one “that plays it too safe.” But Nicholas Bell of IONCINEMA calls the film “obsessive royalty porn,” called the casting of Depp “a scandal,” and like all Heard stans mistakes mainstream media and gender activist opinion as being the same as “public opinion”; thinking people from any political side can agree on something if the facts support it—and the facts supported the case that Heard was a liar and abuser.
Bell also criticizes the film’s historical accuracy, but he himself displays his own ignorance by calling Louis XV “an egregiously vile monarch”—and thus Depp—when in fact the king’s “nickname” at the time was “Louis the Beloved.” Obviously Bell didn’t notice that this was the way the Cannes audience reacted to Depp.
John Bleasdale of CinVue is another who claims that Cannes is “out of touch” when it is in fact people like himself who are out of touch with reality. To him, the film is “the equivalent of receiving a beautiful box of elaborate chocolates only to find inside empty wrappers because the giver has scoffed the lot. Depp is more than stunt casting but he quills it in, with a monosyllabic moodiness which is happy enough to just be employed.”
He
goes on to say that “There are protests on the streets of Paris; Cannes itself
is accused of being a festival of abusers and we’re told to eat this cake of a
movie. As for Depp, whose industry rehabilitation many feared/hoped this film
would kickstart, Jeanne du Barry feels like a fitting punishment.”
Again, this is a reviewer who telegraphs his negativity toward the film before
he’s ever seen it, and it is this negativity that informs his “judgment.” This is a review we can send to the trash bin.
From the Daily Beast, another sordidly pro-Heard publication, Esther Zuckerman says “Everything About Johnny Depp at Cannes Was an Embarrassing Disaster”—but for whom? It certainly was an “embarrassing disaster” for anyone who thought the festival would be flooded with anti-Depp, pro-Heard supporters following the “vicious case” Depp brought against Heard; Zuckerman merely exposes herself as another person who thinks Depp did not deserve due process and that we were supposed to simply give-in the Heard’s lies and those who beat on us to “believe all women.”
Zuckerman went on to accuse Maïwenn of being “anti-MeToo” with a “cavalier attitude to assault”—which is something we should accuse Zuckerman of if she is defending an abuser like Heard, who was arrested at Sea-Tac Airport in 2009 for physically abusing her female partner; while Depp was never arrested or charged with abusing a woman, we heard Heard on that audio admitting to physically abusing Depp. Zuckerman continues on her rant, stating that “Though I admittedly tensed up when he first appeared, but soon my eyes started to glaze over whenever he was on screen, mainly because he (thankfully) wasn't really doing anything.”
During a subsequent press conference, Depp suggested that people like this needed to get a life, get over it and he was past caring about the lies they were continued to perpetuate anyways. In an interview Depp did with the AP, the writer opines that “One thing that’s been unclear was if Depp had any remorse for how the trial — a bitter and often theatrical legal battle played out in front of cameras — unfolded. Depp became a hero to some right-wing critics of so-called cancel culture.”
Why should Depp have any “remorse” that the truth was revealed? The people who are having remorse are obviously the same people who are “befuddled” over the positive responses he has received at the festival, with "fans grasping for autographs and signs (that) read 'Viva Johnny!'” But "On social media, the reception was more fraught. Supporters of Heard rallied around the hashtag #CannesYouNot, arguing that Cannes shouldn’t have invited Depp.”
But the fact you didn’t see any of those people at the festival just shows you how far on the fringes they are; they don’t represent the vast majority of the opinion of people who actually paid attention to the evidence and not their own self-obsessions and narcissism.
The AP goes on "Asked if he had any misgivings about the supporters he attracted, Depp responded: “I did notice that people actually opened their mouths about it. At that time, that was brave. Not for a moment will I regret anything unless I’ve done something horrible to someone, which I haven’t. I’m not going to regret being taken down a strange road for that period of time because I learned so much more about myself.”
Obviously Heard and her stans didn’t learn anything about themselves. I am definitely not a “right-winger,” yet I support Depp because I hate hypocrisy and oppression, and the mainstream media has been guilty of it in so many ways that it is painfully laughable to still encounter this kind of mentality that still refuses to understand the reasons why Depp won and Heard lost: because of the evidence—or in Heard’s case, lack thereof—as seen by the jury.
There was nothing “theatrical” about what when on in the courtroom; what continues to be a “theatrical” farce is quoting pathetic Heard stans like Eve Barlow and failing to understand how U.S. “culture,” civility and justice has been undermined by extremist views from both the right and the left—particularly by gender activists in the latter with the MSM's connivance to go on search-and-destroy missions and worry about the facts later. In the Depp/Heard case, for some even the truth wasn’t enough.
But in regard to the film, it is perhaps difficult for a reviewer not to be influenced by their political and social opinions. But what we saw in the negative opinions about Jeanne du Barry was way too much animosity toward Depp, a desire to sink the film because he was in it. Having not seen the film, even if these negative reviewers are “right” and the positive reviews are “wrong,” their adherence to mainstream media directives activates suspicion of their motivations and credibility. As we see, the positive reviews were mainly by people who just sat there and took in the film; the negative ones were mainly by people who came into it already with “knives sharpened.”
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