Johnny Depp’s French-speaking Jeanne Du Barry film to open Cannes Film Festival

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Eric Garcia

Washington Bureau Chief

Johnny Depp’s new film Jeanne Du Barry will open the Cannes Film Festival, it has been announced.

Directed by and starring French filmmaker Maïwenn, the French-language film tells the story of King Louis XV‘s mistress Jeanne Vaubernier.

Maïwenn will play the eponymous lead in the period drama, with Depp, in his first feature film role in three years, playing her king in the French-speaking role.

The supporting cast includes Benjamin Lavernhe, Melvil Poupaud, Pierre Richard, Pascal Greggory and India Hair.

In the film’s synopsis, Vaubernier is described as “a young working-class woman hungry for culture and pleasure, who uses her intelligence and allure to climb the rungs of the social ladder one by one”.

“She becomes the favourite of King Louis XV who, unaware of her status as courtesan, regains through her his appetite for life. They fall madly in love. Against all propriety and etiquette, Jeanne moves to Versailles, where her arrival scandalises the court,” it reads.

Jeanne Du Barry’s world premiere will take place at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday 16 May and will be released in cinemas the same day in France, the festival announced on Wednesday (5 April).

The film was shot in 2022, around the time of Depp’s highly publicised trial with ex-wife Amber Heard.

Depp sued Heard in Virginia court for defamation, claiming that she had falsely implied he was abusive towards her in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed titled: “I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change”.

The jury ultimately ruled in favour of Depp, though also found in favour of Heard’s countersuit, in which she claimed that Depp’s lawyer had defamed her by describing her abuse allegations as a “hoax”. Heard later settled the defamation case with Depp.

This lawsuit followed Depp suing The Sun for defamation in 2018 after it published an article describing him as a “wife beater”. A UK court ruled that the claim was “substantially true”.

Depp has not been cast in a major US film since the UK trial.