Palais royal!

If a list of the most underrated personalities of French cinema is drawn,Valérie Lemercier would easily figure in it with veteran director Patrice Leconte. About Valérie Lemercier it can be said that she never ceases to amuse critics and viewers in equal measure. Watching her films as an actress as well as a director, one get the feeling that she is not as dumb as she prefers to get depicted. She proves this assertion in her film "Palais Royal". Most people view comedy as a frivolous activity which does not interest serious people. This fallacy is vigorously challenged by leading French actress/director Valérie Lemercier as she establishes that comedy is a highly serious business which can be an enormous aid too in getting key issues heard by a large section of the society. As a comedy film, "Palais Royal" is an innocuous assault on the whims and fancies of a royal family whose members suffer from numerous ethical as well as moral weaknesses. Audiences get to see how the members of a royal family are normal human beings with decent share of vices as well as virtues. Although the film might have been covertly influenced by the travails of the English royal family, incidents and situations portrayed in this film are products of an original scenario.Lastly, apart from Lambert Wilson and Valérie Lemercier, actors such as Mathilde Seigner, Gilbert Melki and Catherine Deneuve do give proper attention to their roles.

First of all, I am a huge fan of Valérie Lemercier! She's been entertaining us for nearly 20 years and she's still surprising us yet. "Palais Royal !" is her third work as a director, and it is the funniest. Her previous two efforts were good, but with this one, she proves herself as a great writer.

The storyline is very simple : After the King dies, her husband (played by the always classy Lambert Wilson) is destined to take the crown, and her to become part of a world she doesn't really know of. As you can see, the plot is very basic, but what shows Lemercier's cleverness is her ability to laugh at the clichés and the explore every little details of her characters. Her screenplay is full of subtle jokes and plays of words - some can regret that a few jokes are a bit... vulgar, but always very funny if you can understand the double meanings.

As for the actors, we have a royal cast here: Queen Catherine Deneuve (who's never been so funny), the sarcastic Michel Aumont and the hilarious Gilbert Melki, among others (all are very good). Last but not least, Valerie Lemercier shows us one more time she's a gifted actress by handling all the versatility of her character.

"Palais Royal !" is the best French comedy of the year !

This is, of course, a comedy. So, let's talk funny: three testicles theme, the whole Deneuve character, the opening London sequence, personal trainer guy - very funny. The whole thing is a bit long, but quite enjoyable. I'm just wondering if they also ridicule the Belge (the only French-speaking continental people with royalty), as it goes along, but I don't know French enough to catch the nuances. One interesting quality - since it is a poke at the English, the humour is very held-back (not the usual French buffonade), easily the "English gentlemen"-like comic routine, perfectly in line with stuff like the "Stiff upper lip". I guess it is THE stylistic gimmick used here, apart from the obvious Diana satire, to our delight.

When you look at the actress playing Armelle, an ordinary speech therapist inadvertently married to a prince, when you consider her shapeless body, her unappealing face, her unbecoming clothing style you just can't believe she is the same Valérie Lemercier who found the energy necessary to write this story, to convince producers to give her enough money to make this lavish-looking movie, to allow her to film it in three different countries, with a stellar cast, including Catherine Deneuve in a royal but self-mocking role, and, to crown it all, featuring herself as the leading lady...! But when the ugly duckling starts rebelling against the silly etiquette that stifles her and against the falseness masked by fairy tale appearances, slowly blossoming into a slick, elegant, attractive, self-assertive young lady, you suddenly realize that Valérie Lemercier is not cast against type. Just like real life humorist Valérie Lemercier, Armelle has become go ahead, dynamic and capable, refusing to be manipulated, commenting on her social environment with biting humor.

"Palais Royal!", her third work as a director, is a comedy, but there is more to it than that. It is also - and most of all- a sharp satire of life at court, denouncing its silly etiquette as well as all the meanness, the falseness and the hidden vulgarity inherent in such regimes.In great part inspired by the doomed destiny of Diana, princess of Wales, the film makes the viewer understand better the Via Dolorosa Diana had to go through before her untimely death. But, thanks to comedy, Lemercier does it avoiding the heavy-handed pathos of a soap.

The actors are all excellent. I will single out a few, like Catherine Deneuve, perfect as the callous queen, Lambert Wilson as the new king not exactly killing himself at his royal task, Michel Aumont as the would-be dignified chief of protocol and Michel Vuillermoz as pathetic prince Alban, ruled out from the throne for "testicule reasons".

The only shortcoming I would deplore is the excessive vulgarity Lemercier indulges in. Of course she means to expose this defect among people who have exquisite manners while on official duty and who let themselves go as soon as they are away from the limelight, but this viewer feels that she derives pleasure in being graphic. Such complacency slightly reduces the impact of the satire. Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch who have often been accused of the same leaning for vulgarity knew where to draw the line though.

Whatever, all in all, a film well worth seeing.

Awful, awful, and awful ! Even worse than " Brice of Nice" ... Even worse than " Arbres" ... Not even a glimpse of interest ! Vulgar, rogue, ... The only consolation I had was to see it on a DVD . Wasting ten dollars for such a crap in a theater would have been just unbearable !!!!!! I you want to see a Valerie Lemercier at her best, pass your way on Palais Royal and try to find the one and only " The Visitors" DVD one of my funniest movies! Actually, speaking of "Palais Royal", I really don't understand how such good actors like Denis Podalydes or Valerie Lemercier herself have accepted to play in such a movie. Oh, sorry, I was forgetting : Valerie Lemercier is the Director ! As a lesson, good actors don't always mean good film makers.

MutantMutton