But in a gorgeous period piece that is never boring, you can’t deny the entertainment value of Madame du Barry, one of the most captivating women since Madame Bovary, and all the more fascinating because she was real.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 6, 2024

[T]he story's intriguing complexities are smoothed over, submerged, and deemed less interesting than the lovers' stunning surroundings.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 5, 2024

The tableaux are stunning, the costumes surreal and truffle-rich, but the film doesn’t let period details obscure the scandalous love story at its royal center. A warm, scented bath of a movie.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 3, 2024

Overlapping with Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” but minus the mischievously anachronistic touches, it’s a finely wrought story of palace intrigue enriched by lush sets and decors.

| May 2, 2024

Magnificent to behold but basically lacking a point, this period-rich historical epic seems uncertain about what it wants to say about its main character.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 2, 2024

One might expect a film pairing these two actors would produce combustible results. But “Jeanne du Barry,” written, directed by and starring Maïwenn, is an ultimately snoozy historical period piece.

| May 2, 2024

French filmmaker Maiwenn stars in her latest creation, “Jeanne du Barry,” a watchable and entertaining costume film where she plays the famous 18th century mistress of King Louis XV.

| May 1, 2024

[Depp] proves that he remains one of cinema’s most magnetic presences—even if his latest project doesn’t do terribly much with him.

| Apr 29, 2024

Like the real Countess du Barry, it’s eventually caught up in the very pomp and splendor that it initially lampoons.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 28, 2024

Most of the actual biographical detail, meanwhile, comes in voiceover, delivered in the tone of a weary Versailles tour guide, still some way from their next cigarette break.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 22, 2024

It’s a curiously inert affair: constrained, corseted, passionless and saddled with a lumpen, Depp-shaped deadweight where there should be a pulse-racing core of power and desire.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 21, 2024

Louis XV is played by Johnny Depp, in a performance so remarkably listless that his casting seems to serve no other purpose than to deliberately stoke controversy.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 19, 2024

Jeanne Du Barry marks another mediocre, dull and dreary start for one of the world’s biggest celebrations of cinema.

| Jun 8, 2023

Written and directed by Maiwenn, the film is a good-looking bon-bon with an undemanding flavour; it pleases the eye, but doesn’t linger...

| May 30, 2023

Jeanne du Barry is much too tame unlike it's leading lady!

| May 25, 2023

Johnny Depp is subdued to the point where he’s barely conscious.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 24, 2023

Jeanne du Barry isn’t dull, or a disgrace. But it’s more of a curiosity than a must-see, and certainly not Depp’s finest hour.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 18, 2023

Against the odds, Jeanne du Barry has turned out to be a subtle and well-crafted costume drama with plenty of satirical bite.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 18, 2023

While Maïwenn’s boldest moves are to cast herself as the mistress who won the king’s heart and to retell history through the eyes of this “fallen woman”, Jeanne du Barry soon settles into the familiar mode of plodding royal procedural.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 18, 2023

It’s hard to say that Depp’s performance justifies the fuss, because the movie’s all about Jeanne, not Louis; we see him through her eyes, and he spends much of the movie lounging in opulent settings without really doing much.

| May 18, 2023