Farewell, My Queen: CALL Discussion Group

Farewell, My Queen (orig. Les adieux a la Reine)

Co-written, directed by Benoit Jacquot

It’s largely sunny on July 14-17 in 1789 at Versailles (pronounced ver-sigh) and the peasants are revolting. They’re also angry and defiant. The complacent Louis XVI (Xavier Beauvois) and his Austrian skirt Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger) plan a quick trip to evade the kerfuffle. But here the historic sweep of the French Revolution is consigned to the background. We see almost none of it. The film centers on the servants’ and courtiers’ intrigues, assuming the viewpoint of Sidonie Laborde (Lea Seydoux). She’s Marie’s devoted lectrice, a lady-in-waiting hired to read to the bored queen. Sidonie’s devotion to the queen borders on passionate ardor. The queen confides her passion -- unrequited -- for the Duchess Gabrielle de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen), a historic figure who was rumored to be Marie’s lover as well as her best friend. The Duchess ranks No. 3 -- of course Marie is No. 1 -- on the revolutionaries’ Top 286 guillotine hit list. Climactically, the queen orders Sidonie to act as bait. She risks her life by switching identities with Gabrielle, to enable her mistress’s love to escape.

Questions

1. Historic fictions are less about the time in which they are set than about the time  when the work is made. After all, why tell that story now? The best turn out to reflect upon the time they are received. So this film is not really about the French Revolution.    That’s why it doesn’t tell you anything you probably don’t already know about it. How is it about now? Does the absence of guillotine shots preclude reference to the trickle down theory?
2. What is the significance about its focus on the servant courtiers rather than the royals?
3. How does the English translation of the title affect our reading of the film? Clue: the English is singular, the French plural; the queen becomes my. 
4. What is the significance of the design of the interior sets?
5. What larger themes are involved in Sidonie’s relationship with Marie and how it plays out?
6. How do the Downstairs scenes reflect on the Upstairs ones? Note that Sidonie doesn’t even get the pile of gold coins the queen pays for her embroidered dahlia. In this power structure does service/servility pay? 
7. What is the point of the tapestry and embroidery scenes? Any connection to “The people are a fabric that is highly combustible?” 
8. What are the implications of the heroine being the queen’s “reader”?
9. What does the film say about culture? About power?
10. How do you read the mosquitos (les moustiques)? The rats? Sidonie’s golden clock?
11. Jacquot depicts an underclass that scuttles for information, though it’s usually just gossip and rumour. Sidonie is especially dedicated to collecting info -- to the point of giving Paolo a quickie, almost, and cultivating the pathetic old archivist -- yet she’s scolded by an equal for being entirely secretive. What’s the point here? 
12. What is the significance of Sidonie’s opening and later fall? 
13. What is the director’s view of the famously scandalous queen (notorious for her alleged “Let them eat cake”)? Of Louis XVI?
14. Why does the film suggest (and only suggest) a possible lesbian relationship between Marie and the Duchess, or in Sidonie? Is Sidonie’s view of the nude, sleeping Duchess pertinent?
15. In the first scene Marie compliments Sidonie’s “pudgy” beauty. How does this connect to her last-scene deception? 
16. How does fashion form a theme here? Note, only Marie and Gabrielle change their dresses, except for the climactic escape scene. 
17. What’s the point of those scenes where there is no music and we hear outdoor sounds -- e.g., cats, crows, crickets?
18. How do you read Sidonie’s conduct in the escaping coach (head into the wind, waving at the peasants)?
19. What current themes does this film share with The Queen of Versailles?
20. Read the last shot. As the coach tears offscreen, the empty night road remains and we hear Sidonie voiceover: “I obeyed my queen. Soon I will be far from Versailles. I will be no-one.” 
21. La bord means the border, edge, hem. How does that reflect on Sidonie Laborde’s meaning?
22. How do these lines open out:

i.“What will happen to us?”

ii“Your love of the queen makes you blind to her caprice.”
          iii “The more he cheats, the more she eats.”
           iv“We’re human beings just like her” spoken by the thieving lady-in-waiting.
            v  Marie: “I will go disguised as the queen of France."
           vi“They hide everything from me.”
          vii “Envy is the most common feeling in the world.”
        viii Louis: “How can anyone want power?... a curse hidden with an ermine cloak.”
          ix Sidonie: “Words are all I possess.”