Reviews rip Johnny Depp’s big-screen comeback as ‘gone-to-seed’ French king

Johnny Depp has certainly made a splash at the Cannes Film Festival this week while promoting his big-screen comeback in the French historical drama “Jeanne du Barry,” though it’s being disputed on Twitter whether his standing ovation at the film’s screening was actually seven minutes.

But thus far, the reviews of the film are united in saying that the controversial actor’s performance as the French King Louis XV doesn’t live up to the hype surrounding his first appearance in a movie in three years, and not just because he’s not in the movie all that much. The reviews say that Depp is muted or “taciturn” in the role, or that the usually “too busy” and forcibly quirky actor appears uncomfortable in what The Guardian said is still a “spectacular” bit of stunt casting. Reviews also describe Depp’s French as either “respectable” or laughably uneven, while others suggest he either reveals his worst tendencies as an actor — or doesn’t play them up enough.

It’s easy to wonder why Depp would be uncomfortable in a role that seems tailor-made for him in certain respects, as described by Indiewire critic Ben Croll. The film centers on the life of the titular Jeanne du Barry, played by the film’s equally controversial director Maïwenn. Du Barry was a lowborn courtesan whose affair with Louis scandalized Versailles. According to Croll, the film presents Louis as a character who could be channeling some of the real-life Depp’s experiences at this stage of his legendary career: “For Louis is a man long gone to seed, a one-time sun king whose glow has dimmed in luxury and indulgence, but whose name — and power that still holds — endures.”

Like other critics, Croll said that Depp’s performance doesn’t make that much of an impression, “offering a dim and muted turn that plays off his wider reputation in often fascinating ways.” Variety’s Peter Debruge said that Depp, wearing powder and a stiff white wig, “seems strangely uncomfortable in the role — adequate but not especially engaged.” He continued: “Depp’s the kind of player who delivers practically every performance with a wink, so it’s odd that even when his Louis is actually supposed to be winking (at Jeanne), the sparkle isn’t there.”

Robbie Collin, chief film critic for The Telegraph, was even more harsh about Depp’s participation in what he called a “stale and drafty period piece.” He said, “Depp may be the actor least suited — after Hulk Hogan — to playing an Ancien Régime monarch.” While he said Depp’s French is “not too shabby,” his “regal gravitas is nonexistent, and he only truly looks at home in the role during occasional bouts of clowning, which hardly help sell his casting as an inspired choice.”

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Jordan Mintzer said Depp’s “performance isn’t bad,” and offered that the actor offers a “few early thrills” but then “mostly yawns.” Mintzer agreed with other critics, who said that Depp and co-star Maïwenn have little chemistry. The” two of them, like the movie, rarely get our pulse racing,” he said.

London Times critic Kevin Maher suggested that Depp might be trying to deliver “a controlled performance,” which he said is “impressive” from an actor “whose default setting is often too busy and too much.” As a result, Depp presents “a forlorn character of sadness and quiet regret.” Depp also speaks French throughout the movie, though with an American accent. In one scene, Maher said, Depp stares at the moon and sighs at the “divine mystery,” which, from Depp, comes out sounding like “Kell mister divieene!”

In writing about “the rehabilitation” of Depp, Maher described all the fuss and fury swirling around him at Cannes. The actor “stampeded” into Cannes just days after signing a $20 million contract with Dior Sauvage, and his arrival has been met with both applause and howls of protest and an online campaign, #CannesYouNot, which features a snapshot of Depp over the tagline “If you support Cannes, you support predators.”

Depp filmed “Jeanne du Barry” last year, shortly after the end of his lurid defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard, during which the jury heard evidence about the actor’s abuse of alcohol and drugs and self-indulgent lifestyle. The jury nonetheless found in Depp’s favor, agreeing that Heard defamed him when she described herself in a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”