It might be that Marie still waits for a true incarnation, but Jacquot's pushing her beyond likeability is refreshing.

| Apr 12, 2018

His portrait loses some of its eerie power through the ugly twist at the film's conclusion, but she remains a fascinating enigma, and touchingly human.

| Nov 5, 2013

Jacquot has chosen wisely in casting La Seydoux in the key role of Sidonie, whose luminous but watchful eyes suggest a soul wise beyond her years.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 24, 2012

Beniot Jacquot [...] compliments immersive storytelling with a cast full of painstakingly authentic performances.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 22, 2012

"Farewell, My Queen" is a layer cake of royal pleasures, rote protocols and revolutionary politics. For skeptics who thought this story had grown stale, let them eat their words.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 10, 2012

The details of the plot are unimportant: that is the main point made by the skillful director, Benot Jacquot. It is the slowness with which they realize what is happening that fascinates.

| Aug 8, 2012

Although it was shot at Versailles, and its actors are dressed to the 18th-century nines, Farewell, My Queen has a loose, reportorial intimacy about it.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 2, 2012

The foreboding and chaos contrast neatly with the lavish costumes and sets.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 26, 2012

We know what will happen, of course, but Jacquot still manages to create tension, as well as a semi-soap opera, among the let-them-cake-eaters of post-Enlightenment France.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 26, 2012

"Farewell, My Queen" is worth a look simply for its look.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 26, 2012

The guillotine's blade is, as yet, nowhere to be heard. But you can feel Jacquot's pleasure is slicing and dicing this material in novel ways.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 26, 2012

Jacquot takes a refreshingly understated approach to costume drama, avoiding historical generalizations to focus on the particulars of palace life and the psychological states of individual characters.

| Jul 19, 2012

Benoit Jacquot's engrossing film tells a story we know well, seen from a point of view we may not have considered.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 19, 2012

It's a strangely unsatisfying combination of bloodless observations and unresolved sexuality. But Diane Kruger's queen, a mature beauty mourning the loss of her youth, is a vivid portrait of willfulness, childishness and genuine neediness.

Full Review | Jul 13, 2012

Jacquot's lavish dcor and costumes are like the perfume the women use instead of bathing: They may cover up the willful carelessness at the center of the project, but it's still there.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 13, 2012

Matching the strength of these actresses and their personal drama is the film's masterful sense of time and place - the way it makes us feel that this was how it was during four pivotal days in July 1789 as the wheels came off the French monarchy.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 12, 2012

Deftly captures the sense of impending revolution from within the mirrored halls of Versailles.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 12, 2012

Benot Jacquot's tense, absorbing, pleasurably original look at three days in the life and lies of a doomed monarch ...

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 12, 2012

The experience of watching it is something like lounging on a satin divan, being fanned lazily with a bouquet of ostrich plumes.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Jul 12, 2012

Farewell, My Queen has some routine period-drama moments, but at its boldest it foretells a time when a single girl can be a free woman.

| Jul 12, 2012