Lauren Greenfield’s documentary The Queen of Versailles is playing at the Fargo Theater. Click here for showtimes.

This is the dream, told in documentary The Queen of Versailles, of 43-year-old former beauty queen Jackie, wife of David Siegel, the 74-year-old billionaire king of time share. While David sits and growls, sometimes on a throne but more often bare-chested in his cluttered, dirty den, Jackie has turned cheerfulness into a career. She manages to combine it with giving birth to eight children, adopting another, stroking dogs, having her assets pumped or bronzed and designing her palace. What she doesn’t spend her time doing is looking after the children or dogs, preferring to leave that to her fleet of nannies. Of course, we all know what happened to the original occupants of Versailles – or maybe Jackie doesn’t. When the time share bubble bursts, the unfinished property is put up for sale (not that anyone can afford to buy it) and huge numbers of Siegel’s employees are laid off.

But there’s something about the super rich. They can lose their businesses and fortunes but somehow they still act rich. It’s the people who work for them and lose their jobs who have the hard time of it.

The Queen of Versailles had quite an impact on me. Skilfully filmed by Lauren Greenfield, with no commentary or judgement made upon its subjects, the documentary makes it difficult for us to dislike Jackie, despite all her excesses. It is, however, very easy to dislike her grumpy old husband. But Jackie is all smiles and she appears to care genuinely for the people around her. Clearly once intelligent, she had set herself a goal and achieved it and when it starts to go wrong she continues to smile and you sense that she will survive.

But, for me, the lasting memories of the film weren’t the vacuous and funny bits of nonsense that came out of Jackie’s mouth and made me laugh. It was the faces and stories of the people controlled by the Sieglers, especially one of the nannies. This woman hadn’t seen her own children in years, not since they were small and not as adults. Instead she sent them her pay. She found a refuge from the huge, chaotic, messy, dog-dirted house in a small wendy house in the grounds, barely big enough to fit a single bed. Then there’s the chauffeur who’d given so many years to the family and at the end of the day had very little to show for it. Finally, all those time share employees, all out of work.

Jackie is a kind person within her own world and she had given money to help out an old school friend in trouble but it hadn’t saved her house. There’s a big difference between a woman in difficulties losing her home and Queen Jackie losing her Versailles.

While I thought The Queen of Versailles was an excellent documentary, the latest in a string of superb documentaries I’ve seen at the theatre over the last couple of years, it moved me to tears and rage. This is not a criticism of the film, it’s a testament to the quality of its making. It made me furious at the excesses of greedy society and at the human cost of this selfishness. A lack of taste has rarely seemed so ugly to me.

I walked out of the cinema with just one thought marching through my head: ‘Vive la revolution!’

These people are billionaires, and there’s no way you’re going to be able to relate to their wealth. What you will be able to relate to is their needs, their failures, their hubris, their relationship troubles, their struggles, their addiction to consumerism, and their inability to cope. Here’s the trailer:

The director, Lauren Greenfield, also explores the financial lives of people close to the Seigels, including their nanny, Jackie’s best friend from high school (Tina), and their limo driver. The parallels are poignant and profound, especially in Tina’s story. Jackie and Tina were inseparable as teens, but their lives took completely different paths. They converge again in the fact that Tina is losing her house, just like Jackie. The scale may be different, but the emotions are much the same.

~HS

Lauren Greenfield and her team started following the Siegel family as they were building their new home which would have been, by the way, the largest house in America, “inspired” by the Palace of Versailles, complete with Louis XIV columns and gilded ceilings. This opening chapter is definitely entertaining…in an MTV kind of way, an easy amalgamation of ‘The Osbournes’ and ‘Newlyweds’ with ‘Cribs’ shots thrown in here and there – “and this is where we put the orchestra” (cue laughter). But then! Suddenly! the stock market crashes mid filming, leaving the Siegel’s fortune in crisis and Lauren Greenfield with the Documentary Directing Award at Sundance this year. There is something fishy in the fortunes of documentary makers like Greenfield, who accidentally stumble on these stranger than fiction stories in real life, like Paul Giamatti’s character in Todd Solondz’s ‘Storytelling’ (2001), the story seems a little too good to be true. Whilst it may be a liiitle far fetched to suggest that Greenfield somehow caused a global recession for the sake of her movie (now that would be a good story), she must have been pretty happy when it did – and so are we, gleefully laughing as the Siegel subjects are forced to budget and start to live a little more like ‘the rest of us’.

And it was a double jackpot win for Greenfield with the discovery of the seriously fabulous Jackie Siegel, who totally carries the film. Jackie, ‘The Queen’, is both the air-head silicone ex beauty queen you want her to be, and the quietly intelligent compassionate person and mother, who keeps her family from falling as quickly into disrepair as the sad skeleton of their eternally unfinished palace. She is also very fucking funny, both intentionally and not, though I suspect some of her ditsy moments are not without a sense of irony. This queen is impossible to dislike, even though we laugh at her, because she knows what she is, and if she saw us, she’d probably laugh too. Her attempts to make amends for the thousands of workers struck off by the fall of the Siegel empire are really touching, even if they are minutely effective, and her humbled attitude seems totally genuine. This is in total contrast to David Siegel, Jackie’s King, who probably really is the super villain we have pictured in our heads. His insistence that he was personally responsible for the re-election of George W and that Iraq “probably wouldn’t have happened” if it wasn’t for him, was seriously not funny and actually quite frightening. Jackie acts as the light relief for both her family and the audience, without her this film would have been a grim tragedy. Only she, and her beautiful plastic boobies, can distract us from the worst facts of the recession and from all the world’s corruption.

This lightening of a serious subject has caused some criticism of the movie. There is definite mockery in the film’s funniest moments, as though the wealth of the Siegel subjects and their high social standing gives the film’s audience an assumed higher moral position and therefore the right to laugh and gloat at the family’s downturn. This has led to accusations from some critics that Greenfield exploits her subject, raising the old debate of responsibility in documentary filmmaking – is there a different moral spectrum in the documentary situation than in real life? But actually, ‘The Queen of Versailles’ is fair towards its subject, and we are somehow even made to sympathise with the decline of the Siegels, who are basically the bad guys in modern society. Greenfield proves her directional ability in preventing the film from being the smear campaign on the grossly rich it so easily could have been. Instead, the documentary is a level headed portrayal of a family in crisis, AND of a society in crisis. Although we may laugh at Jackie Siegel struggling to keep herself away from the Caviar in these difficult times, you do wonder whether we would all behave in the same way if placed in their situation. Take the “inherited” Siegel child (bringing the total number of kids to 8), brought from poverty to the Siegel home, who speaks herself of the ease in which one becomes accustomed to such wealth and how it changes your perception of what is normal and what is due to you, a sense of entitlement symptomatic of the cycle of lending which preceded and triggered the recession. Greed is an addiction to which nobody is immune, and only circumstance can restrict the level to which that addiction overtakes you. Of course the Siegels are not as vulnerable as their family friend who loses her house, the pinnacle of her life’s work, because of debt. I’m sure Jackie could sell a few antique chairs and fur coats to buy a house most of us would be more than comfortable living in, but the problem of greed and debt exists for them just as it does for the less wealthy. So this documentary is no longer about one family of gluttonous sinners, and their deserved decline, but is a portrait of the problem of greed in modern society, that can be watched with a sense of introspection as humbling as Jackies’ visit to the deserted Siegel timeshare offices. Families like the Siegels are nothing like most of the us, and probably never will be, but for a few moments there it seemed like they could be, and once or twice I actually saw myself when watching them. That takes a real directional gift. Guess it wasn’t pot luck after all. Huh!

Quote: “It doesn’t come with a driver?”

If this film was….

Food: Maccy Dees

Animal: A pedigree pet poodle

Item of clothing: A pedigree pet poodle immortalised in Jackie Siegel’s collection of pom pom mules

COOL/UNCOOL

PDN‘s PhotoPlus International Conference + Expo is only four weeks away, so if you have not yet signed up, do not tarry. Register here for the conference, which runs October 24–27 (the expo itself is from the 25th to the 27th).

This year’s event features “Lunchtime Keynote” presentations with Stephen Shore (he’ll talk about “Challenging Convention”), James Balog (“Chasing Ice”), and David LaChapelle (“Artist or Artless”).

There will also be a sneak preview of Jeff Orlowski‘s new documentary film, Chasing Ice, which centers on Balog.

As always, the event is packed full of seminars led by leading industry figures—including the below ones featuring members of Stockland Martel‘s roster:

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Art Streiber
Thu, Oct 25, 2012 – 8:45 AM to 11:45 AM
The Big Picture: Editorial Photography Behind the Scenes

Art Streiber directs Justin Bieber during their cover shoot for Vanity Fair. Click to watch.

Description: What does it take to produce a photo shoot for the nation’s top magazines? What goes on behind the scenes during pre-production, on the shoot and in post-production? How do those production details scale up if you’re shooting eight, 23 or 35 subjects? And how do you edit, manage and store your editorial archive? How and where are the final images featured as marketing pieces? In this three-hour seminar, Streiber will pull back the curtain on his published images and discuss every facet of editorial production and marketing—from getting the assignment to negotiating through the creative process to the importance of custom printing, color correction and post-production for the final look you want with digital delivery. The nuts and bolts of production will also be covered, with attention to subjects such as hammering out pre-production details, macro and micro managing on set and the people skills needed to deal with both crew and talent. Getting the next assignment once your first shoot is wrapped and making the Web a key to your editorial growth will also be addressed. Streiber’s finished images will be shown, as published in Vanity Fair, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly and other national magazines, plus behind-the-scenes photos that reveal how the shoots came together. This seminar is ideal for beginning and intermediate photographers, as well as advanced shooters who are interested in fine-tuning their production process.

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Panelists: Doug Menuez, Candace Gelman, Kevin Jordan
Moderator: Debra Weiss
Fri, Oct 26, 2012 – 8:45 AM to 11:45 AM
How to Get Work From Ad Agencies

Some recent ads shot by Doug Menuez. Clockwise from top left: GE, Sundance Channel, Chevron, and Emirates Airlines.

Description: Join Debra Weiss and guests for an information packed discussion with an agent, art buyer, creative director and photographer. Hear directly from the sources about what is needed to make it as an advertising photographer. Gain insight into what it takes to get their attention, how they choose the photographers they work with and how to build lasting beneficial relationships. You’ll hear their honest and frank perspectives on how you can succeed in this rapidly shifting and increasingly impersonal business. A broad range of topics will be discussed to help you gain confidence in navigating your way through the challenges ahead. This seminar is a must for photographers looking to increase their chance of getting work from ad agencies.

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Lauren Greenfield
Fri, Oct 26, 2012 – 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM
The Documentary Hybrid: Photography + Filmmaking

A tearsheet from Lauren Greenfield’s recent GQ feature on the Las Vegas mega-nightclub Marquee. Lauren also directed a short documentary on the club. Click the still to view it at GQ.com.

Description: As the future of print remains in question and magazines’ and newspapers’ online presence becomes more important, photographers need to consider how to harness new media, video and audio to enhance their photographic work and creative vision. Lauren Greenfield will lecture about her long-term documentary projects and her progression into film for creative impact and educational reach. In that context, she will show her evolution as a documentarian working within the varied platforms of documentary filmmaking, commercial directing and multimedia producing, as well as the traditional but diversified outlets of magazines, books and museums. Greenfield will discuss the making of her commercials, documentary films and multimedia work; the relationship between her films (THIN, Kids + Money, Beauty Culture) and her photography, as well as how video and multimedia can deepen the narrative and provide access to a wider audience and a broader spectrum of commercial clients. She will also discuss the synergy of video and still cameras and the technical crossover possible with both. A presentation of Greenfield’s film, photography and multimedia work will be followed by a Q&A.

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Victoria Granof
Sat, Oct 27, 2012 – 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM
Today’s Food Photography: Stylist and Photographer Collaborations

Recent work by food and photo Victoria Granof. Clockwise from top left: a Bon Appétit cover, a photo from a GQ story on ice cream, an ad for Prescriptives, and an ad for British Airways.

Description: Join food and photo stylist Victoria Granof as she discusses the relationship between photographer and stylist on various collaborations, including cookbooks, editorial articles and more. Granof will address a series of topics including how to build relationships, pre- and post-production, defining a style, working with the same stylist or photographer for different jobs and getting hired as a team, selecting images you want featured, and more.

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The Queen of Versailles

The Queen of Versailles follows the fortunes of the Siegal family who live in Florida. David Siegal is the boss of Westgate Resorts, a successful time share company and he is currently married to his third wife Jackie, a beauty queen and lady of leisure. They were billionaires and to reflect this they decided to build a giant home based on Versailles. 90,000 square foot of tacky, it has room for thirty bathrooms, a baseball pitch, ice skating rink, health spa and many, many other things. This was until the credit crunch and financial crisis hit and their riches begin to evaporate.

The sheer wealth on display in this movie was astounding. Their current house was   a huge decadent property with pillars, marble tubs and a huge kitchen. Despite this the house was bursting at the seams with stuff, children and dogs. They threw lavish parties, spent a fortune on clothes and hob-nobbed with rich and powerful politicians and celebrities. David even makes the scary assertion that he was responsible for getting George W Bush elected, although he would not say now as it was “probably not legal.”

After the crash it was shocking how the family adjusted their priorities. In one particular striking scene, Jackie is shopping for Christmas and rather than carefully gathering gifts within her budget she packed three trollies full of toys, without checking the prices. The nannies then unloaded the cars and in a fantastic shot we see them carrying a new bike past a garage full of unused bikes. There is also the incident of the discovery of a dead lizard. When Jackie tries to question the children about how the lizard dies, one sulked that the staff would not bring her to the pet shop and another was surprised that they had a lizard at all. These are just two examples of the ridiculous wealth and privilege that they were accustomed to and how despite them having come from poverty themselves,  they took it totally for granted.

Despite this spoiled lifestyle laden with health the family were under a heavy burden. Not just in terms of their own family and lifestyle but in the knowledge that their mistakes have affected the lives of thousands. In one scene David describes with tears in his eyes how he had to let go 5,000 employees in one day.  The stress of having to save the company to help maintain the supports of their employees created tension in their household and I could not imagine living with that burden.

But through this adversity the Siegal’s generosity became apparent. Jackie sent an old family friend money to try and stop her home going into foreclosure. She also set up a thrift shop for the local community, with much of the stock coming from her own home and the business. The Siegal’s also helped a friend to set up a driving business after his property business crashed, letting him borrow their cars to drive for clients. In addition to their seven children they also took in Jackie’s niece who was being neglected at home, it was heartbreaking to hear her describe her bedroom as the “dirt room” as she slept on a floor. These generous and warm acts were a really nice counterpoint to the gaudiness and waste of their spending.

One of the biggest surprises of the movie was Jackie herself. From the trailer you would be forgiven for thinking she was a vapid, trophy wife but this was not the case at all. On graduation from High School, she went to work at IBM, her small town’s local employer. She decided to train as an engineer rather than a secretary so she would not have to answer to anyone and would have a good career. She did this at a time when women engineers were even less common than they are today. This is a strange start for a woman who later would become a third wife to a billionaire who she admits took her some time to fall in love with. Jackie seemed a bit clueless about the families finance. She knew they were in trouble but her efforts to intervene were rebuffed with annoyance by David. She said it best herself when she stated that she “was not stupid” but was not being given the information. I can only assume that the seduction of a life of leisure outweighed her desire to be an independent woman.

The impact of family was another strong theme in the documentary. The banks said that they would forgive all of David Seigal’s debts if he just gave up one building. He refused to as he had dedicated it to his parents who loved Las Vegas. To him this was fulfilling a dream that his Dad held, to become a big deal in Vegas. Despite all of his advisers telling him to sell he refused to. He was then backed up by his son from a previous marriage who knew it was the wrong choice but supported him anyway!

This staunch dedication to family did not seem to stretch to his own children however. I was astounded to hear that he had no money set aside for any of his seven children, his niece or any of his children from his previous marriage. We hear that he left his first wife in poverty to raise his first three children. He also seemed to neglect his family emotionally as he became more withdrawn and angry through the move. For a man who would bankrupt a business to hold onto a building that he was emotionally attached to due to his parents it was dazzling to see him disregard his own family.

But the main thing that I will take from this documentary is the sadness of the Filipino Nanny. She has been separated from her own children for over a decade and they do not even call her Mum. She cries as she thinks about them and I couldn’t help but shed a few myself. Her biggest wish is to build a house of her own and that is why she moved to America. She talks about her father and how all he wanted was a concrete house but he died before he could make that dream a reality. Her interviews were heartbreaking and I wish her all the happiness for the future.

The Queen of Versailles is a great portrait of the American dream gone wild and how it can crash and fail. The movie is full of hilarious moments, where the family seem outlandish and carefree as they live the high life. This is balanced by the disaster than unfolds after the crash and the stories of personal loss. You can’t help but admire the people in the documentary who are trying to put their lives together after lifetimes of hard work that were erased. If you are interested in the personal stories of people affected by the credit crunch The Queen of Versailles is well worth a watch.

Currently showing the the Lighthouse cinema and is directed by Lauren Greenfield.

What’s more, the estate’s owners, David and Jackie Siegel, feel that this level of excess and splendor in their home lives exemplifies the ideal American dream.

All of this really makes you wonder if the American Dream needs reconsidering.

Lauren Greenfield’s documentary “The Queen of Versailles” is a simultaneously critical and sympathetic portrait of how Americans cope (or fail to) with a change in lifestyle for the worse. It chooses the Siegels because they are both the most extreme of examples and yet the most familiar.

That’s why this film is called “The QUEEN of Versailles.” David Siegel himself is a wealthy billionaire and CEO of Westgate Resorts, the largest time-share corporation in America. Jackie is only a trophy wife of sorts and a former Miss America 20 years David’s junior. She could be little more than a prop in another documentary, or a monstrous housewife in a trashy reality show.

But Greenfield must’ve realized that Jackie is the humanizing figure in this family, a woman with an Engineering degree from Boston who chose a life in modeling and pageantry. She’s spoiled and further spoils her eight children as a parent, but she’s very likeable. Jackie is exactly the woman you’d want to give you a tour around the largest home in America.

Greenfield photographs at low angles stretching to eternity to gradually paint these people as American royalty without them knowing it, and then she shows them going to McDonalds just because they want to as a way of bringing the Siegels down to Earth.

Through this we’re able to understand and judge their often filthy lifestyle. With so much space in their current home, there’s an obscene amount of clutter. Carpet stains are everywhere, lazy kids lounge unimpressed with their mountain of toys they didn’t know they had, animals lay dead and starved in their tanks due to neglect, and dog poop even litters the hallways.

“The Queen of Versailles” shines by peering through this muck. The Siegels are the far end of the spectrum, but this somehow feels close to the middle class mentality as well. One friend of Jackie’s loses her home to foreclosure because she shares her friend’s insouciance, and even Jackie’s $5000 donation cannot save her.

Where the film doesn’t succeed as well is in the sympathy department. There’s a difference between feeling guilty at all the lives David has destroyed by being forced to layoff over 6000 Westgate employees, including almost all of their 20 family maids, and feeling cheated by the “lenders” and “bankers” who got them into this mess. Who are these mysteriously evil banking figures if even the 1 percenters refer to them as a blanket third person?

At the end of the day, “The Queen of Versailles” is an interesting film, not a trashy or scathing one, about occasionally delightful people. It makes you think more about your own life than the Siegels, despite all the glitz and glamour.

3 stars

“Through these hallowed gates…”

These are the words uttered by David Siegel, ‘The Timeshare King’, gazing off into the middle distance as he pictures his dream house: a sprawling bomb-blast of nouveau riche pomp and bombast. It’s a taste abomination that could only have been conceived in the peculiar vacuum of imagination opened in the heads of the Babyboomers by the day-glo visions of that liar Disney and his tepid concept of romance, aspirational living and happy endings. It’s a particular version of an even greater mistruth: the infamous ‘American Dream’ (Happy Endings R’ Us), which stipulates that anyone can be anything they choose to be if they work hard, play hard and consume consume consume.

After a pause it’s clear that nothing else is coming. David Siegel’s head is pleasantly empty. The words hang in the air, a grandiose sentiment that Siegel is able to start but powerless to finish. He’s clearly bamboozled by this sudden reminder of words’ flightiness; he doesn’t wield the same influence over mock-poetic language as he does over people and things. There’s a hint of impotent desperation somewhere behind his eyes as he glances furtively at the camera, as though on some level he’s aware of playing a part – that of himself – and has no desire to be playing it.

Lauren Greenfield’s The Queen of Versailles, a cheekily-edited documentary charting the epic fall from grace (American grace – ie. wealth) of one of America’s richest entrepreneurs, his extravagent wife Jackie (the ‘Queen’ of the title), and their large family of children, maids and pets is a good film that could have been great, but falls victim to that same need for tidy allegory that demands there be such things as happy endings. In this case the ‘happy’ ending is the moral ending – where David is shown the error of his greedy materialist ways by the advent of a crisis beyond his control. From unintentionally hilarious characters having not a care in the world, the impact of ‘The Crash’ both humbles and humanises the Siegels, bringing them to the level of ordinary people like you or I.

Supposedly.

We watch with a certain glee as bumbling David and former beauty queen Jackie are forced to ‘adjust’ to a life within reason – a life without a private jet, without a team of housekeepers, without continuous spending on frivolous items (which Jackie, in a constant rapture of materialist desire, continues to do). Cleverly, Greenfield uses interviews with the Filipino maids, Jackie’s adopted daughter and David’s estranged son, as well as various other interconnected characters to create a rich tapestry of opinion and experience that acts as a commentary on both the positive and negative aspects of the couples’ life as they go from oblivious (with some moments so ludicrous they might have been scripted by Christopher Guest) to humbled, emotionally vulnerable and relatable. The building of their personal palace is put on hold as David struggles to hold things together, a fittingly symbolic state of affairs mirroring the struggle of ordinary Americans.

Except, of course, their lives aren’t the lives of ordinary Americans. What is shown but not explicitly commented upon is that, despite their apparent poverty (see the dog shit on the carpets, the dying pets left to starve in the absence of maids) Jackie continues to spend sums that most people could only dream of. What is not shown (Greenfield deliberately chose to cease filming at a point of financial uncertainty for the family) is that just after the events depicted David managed to turn things around. He’s now happily ripping people off with crappy timeshare apartments in much the same way as he was before. In humanising them, Greenfield defends the Siegels as much as she mocks them. They clearly don’t want or need her validation; the added irony being that David Siegel, in addition to resuming work on Versailles, is now suing for defamation of character– two rampantly egotistical moves that conveniently sum up the total lack of perspective he was supposed to have gained according to the film’s narrative.

Greenfield has said in interviews that she chose not to continue filming to leave the film as ‘a parable’, which, as a natural fan of this film, was incredibly disappointing to hear; I had felt that this was an important piece of work, something that should be shown to the Trumps, Camerons and Osbournes, Romneys, Sugars and Greenes – all the posh boys and self-made men who don’t give two shits about the people they left behind or never knew. I can’t help but feel that consciously leaving something so important out undermines the strength of the argument, rendering a great deal of meaning the film might have had void.

Having said all that, The Queen of Versailles is still very much worth a watch, especially for the unintentional comedy of the opening half hour. Greenfield has been called a sociological photographer for her work in stills – as director she acts very much like the arch sociologist, crowbarring meaning onto situations and events that don’t necessarily have inherent meaning, to portray the world in the light she’s clearly already decided she wants it to be seen. Is it enjoyable? Yes. Is it honest? Not really.

The Queen of Versailles is in cinemas now. Contributor Ed Wall can be followed on Twitter @edward1wall.

I want to write, to say that I am not healing, and I am not strong, and I am not ready for any of this.  I want to write to you, specifically, and tell you that I am so sorry and so lonely, but those words are not words for sharing.  I want to tell everyone who believed in me that I have failed again, because their sad, pseudo-surprised eyes poke holes in my soul.

I have so much that I want need to say, so many words that are clawing their way out.  The problem is, I don’t have a voice.  My voice is my body, my food, my vomit staining the walls of the toilets.  My voice is my shaking foot and my pants that are more baggy today than yesterday.  My voice is lost underneath my little sister’s voice, screaming that she doesn’t want sour cream.  My voice doesn’t matter here.

I’m cracked right down the surface, but people turn a blind eye.

]]> http://stocklandmartelblog.com/2012/08/30/lauren-greenfield-takes-us-into-the-hottest-nightclub-on-the-planet-for-the-gq-feature-the-best-night500000-can-buy/ Thu, 30 Aug 2012 12:12:58 +0000 Kristina Feliciano http://stocklandmartelblog.com/2012/08/30/lauren-greenfield-takes-us-into-the-hottest-nightclub-on-the-planet-for-the-gq-feature-the-best-night500000-can-buy/ For its September issue, GQ sent Lauren Greenfield to Las Vegas to shoot a feature on the Marquee, a 60,000-square-foot superclub where people spend thousands—no, tens of thousands—of dollars to party. At the Marquee, a table reservation will cost you a thousand bucks. Bottle service at a table on the dance floor will run you $10,000. A 30-liter bottle of champagne and a dozen women to sip it with: $250,000. And people happily pay the price night after night. No wonder GQ calls it “the hottest club on the planet” in the article “The Best Night…$500,000 Can Buy.”

Lauren also produced and directed a short film on the Marquee Las Vegas, which quickly became the No. 1 video at gq.com. “The Best Night Ever” features exclusive interviews with Lou Abin, co-owner of Marquee; Mike Diamond, head of Marquee security; Larson Legris, director of VIP services; VIP hostesses; and customers; as well as colorful, intoxicating cinema verite footage of the club in full hedonistic swing. View the film here.

Below, Lauren’s images as they appeared in the magazine…and on their own…

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Photo by Lauren Greenfield for GQ, September 2012 issue.

Photos by Lauren Greenfield.

Photos by Lauren Greenfield.

The magazine’s Contents page also featured photos by Lauren.

Click screenshot to watch Lauren Greenfield’s short film “The Best Night Ever.”

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

Photo by Lauren Greenfield.

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Beautiful, intelligent, high-minded Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux), reader to the queen at Versaille, is in love with her boss. Marie-Antoinette (Diane Kruger), fully gauging Sidonie’s distinction and her loyalty, makes her a favorite, snuggling with her and the classics of French literature among the satin duvets. Sidonie will hear no ill of the queen from the other courtiers, nor will she complain when her exquisite embroidery, a labor of love for Marie-Antoinette, is passed off as someone else’s. What might have happened between these two had the French Revolution not erupted? Perhaps the queen would have taken Sidonie to bed, placing her in the perilous sites of fortune.

This is more or less what happens, though symbolically and in haste, as the court comes tumbling down. The queen is in fact in love with someone else, the suave Comtesse Gabrielle de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen), who is only too happy to accept Marie-Antoinette’s offer to send her to Switzerland to save her head. This betrayal, which inspires sympathy for the broken-hearted queen despite her abuses of political power, is offset by another. Marie-Antoinette makes a second offer that cannot be refused: for Sidonie to serve her mistress by masquerading as the Comtesse de Polignac in the coach to Switzerland, while the countess pretends to be a serving girl. If the coach is stopped, it is Sidonie who will be sent to the guillotine. The moment in which the queen gazes at the lovely nude girl, in the process of dressing for the masquerade, and Sidonie’s offering of her body to her beloved’s gaze, is the only consummation afforded the two, and Sidonie’s facial expression in that moment shows it to be a bitter one.

Lauren Greenfield’s The Queen of Versailles

The Florida Versailles, that is. Greenfield’s documentary account of Jacqueline and David Siegel’s attempt to replicate the French palace as their personal abode is, like The Great Gatsby, the story of a peculiarly American rise and fall. David Siegel, who boasts that he got George W. Bush into the White House, possibly illegally, made his billions selling resort time shares to people who cannot afford them and borrowing from the banks to keep the scheme rolling. He married his relatively youthful wife Jackie, a former beauty pageant winner and model, and gave her a brood of children and the bedrooms and nannies to match. Jackie’s passion is Samoyeds, but she seems genuinely fond of her husband and children as well. She even adopted the teen-aged black sheep from another branch of the family. She is thrilled at the prospect of moving into a yet bigger house (designed to be the largest in the country), but Versailles is really David’s gig, a sign of his ego as well as of Jackie’s compulsive consumerism.

When the economy goes south, the banks close in on David. He becomes a recluse in his study, sweating over the bills and snapping at his wife for continuing to spend money. At a truly pathetic Christmas party, which Jackie has valiantly tried to pull off without caterers, David spoils what little cheer remains by bitching to his cronies about the banks. The Christmas segment of the film is terribly telling, as the clueless Jackie urges one of the remaining maids into a Rudolph suit and power shops for junk at Walmart to put under the tree. Like Jacquot’s Marie-Antoinette, Jackie earns unexpected sympathy for the loss of love she endures, even as her failure to look beyond the palace walls implicates her in serious wrongs.

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I went to Versailles today! It is such a magnificent, luxurious and beautiful palace and oh my gosh the gardens are massive! Words cannot even begin to describe the feeling the place gives you. I looked at the King's Bedchamber, the Queen's Bedchamber, the Dauphine's Bedchamber and the magical Hall of Mirrors! The Queen's Bedchamber had a giant jewellery box and a secret door by the bed which Marie used to escape to the King's Bedchamber when the French revolutionists came and stormed the palace.

Read more… 371 more words

And these aren’t just any Central Florida residents. The queen in question is Jacqueline Siegel, a former Mrs. Florida who is married to the time share king, Westgate Resorts founder David Siegel.

(Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. Photo Credit: Lauren Greenfield)

Director Lauren Greenfield appears to have been given carte blanche access to the Siegels while filming the documentary that was initially intended to chronicle the Windermere couple’s completion of their new home…a home that would stand to become the largest mansion not only in Florida, but in the entire United States. And a home that has yet to be completed.

A funny thing happened during the construction of the 90,000 square foot mansion that was modeled partly on the Palace of Versailles and partly on a Vegas hotel. The recession hit, the real estate bubble burst, and the Siegel’s found themselves forced to make the same sorts of cuts and concessions as many other Americans. Or at least those Americans possessing the kind of wealth to at least still retain their original 26,000 square foot home.

As they try to figure out ways to keep construction going on the new house, they begin to downsize in ways that are at once both comical and tragic. With no more private jet access, Jacqueline is forced to travel with her eight children via commercial airlines, to extremely funny effect. The domestic crew is cut from a staff of 19 to 4 and the huge house becomes an unmaintainable mess. There’s no one to man the pooper scoopers! And Christmas shopping will now be done at Wal-Mart.

In addition to the Siegels and their children, the housekeeping staff who were retained also play a major role in the story, in shockingly surreal aspects. One of the nannies makes her own house from a discarded playhouse of the children. Another one of the servants takes on the role of Rudolph the Reindeer at the family’s annual Christmas gathering. Watching her prepare for the role is at once hilarious and heartbreaking.

(Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. Photo Credit: Lauren Greenfield)

It’s a testament to the likability of the Siegels that you can even feel slightly sorry for them and their budgetary constraints. Jacqueline seems more like the “girl next door” who just happened to hit the matrimonial lottery. And David’s gruff demeanor and everyman concerns, such as an extended tirade over who was running up the electric bill by leaving the lights on in the house, make us relate to him. The children even seem to be extremely normal. They could be us. But they’re not. And at the film’s close, you come to realize that is probably a good thing. But you’re darn glad you had the chance to spend some time with them.

The Queen of Versailles opens today at the Enzian. Because the theater expects this film to be very popular with Central Florida audiences, they are expecting many showtimes to sell out. The Enzian suggests getting your tickets a few days in advance and planning on arriving to the theater 60-90 minutes before showtime to get in line for a seat. Additional parking is available across the street at Park Maitland School or across 17-92 in the parking lot for First Watch.

“The Queen of Versailles” starts like a reality TV show about a family living the ultimate version of the American Dream. But within half an hour, the super-sized lifestyle of Jackie and David Siegel turns into the American nightmare. The Siegel’s story is a serendipitous one for Greenfield. When she starts the film, the couple is the midst of building America’s largest family mansion, modeled on France’s Versailles (do they get the historical irony of what happened to the owners of the original Versailles?). David and Jackie have eight kids and Jackie, like any good billionaire trophy wife, spends her days spending like mad, buying shoes, clothes, presents, decorations and whatever else she can get her manicured fingernails on.

When we meet David for the first time, he’s a workaholic businessman with an inflated ego. He’s the guy behind the world’s largest luxury timeshare chain, Westgate Resorts. He spends his time in his office, on the phone, or lusting after young and upcoming Miss Americas. Greenfield follows the two at just the right time because what you assume is a rags-to-riches story turns into a rags-to-riches-to-possibly-rags story when the real estate crisis hits America.

Turns out David’s business is build on loans and investments — money that isn’t really there. With threat of foreclosure looming, his empire is on the brink of crumbling. This is where the film turns into a complex study of consumerism, North American lending practices, gender dynamics and even the power of denial.

What’s especially captivating about this film is the perspective on the financial crisis. It’s rare to see it’s effects in such an intimate way on the upper-class. Greenfield observes the family in the most tense of moments, eliciting some honest responses from her subjects. In one scene, David anxiously refuses to leave his work cave to join the family for dinner. Instead, Jackie brings him dinner on a tray and she receives a scoff in return. In an attempt to stand up to her father, their eldest daughter marches in and lectures him on his bad behaviour. Minutes later, his daughter confesses in the voice-over narration that she often thinks her dad married her mother in order to show her off. He shows no real signs of affection or love towards her mother. That’s a rough pill to swallow and a very perceptive observation from a teenager.

The Siegel’s don’t come out looking very pretty but Jackie, despite her powerful denial and intentional naivete, in the end comes across as a woman with a big heart. Unfortunately, she is married to a cold, moody and lecherous man. No wonder David Siegel is suing Lauren Greenfield for defamation as we speak. The film is a captivating hour and forty minutes, leaving you with lots to chew on.

Title: The Queen Of Versailles
Year: 2012
Director: Lauren Greenfield
Writer: -
Starring: Jackie Siegel, David Siegel
MPAA Rating: PG, thematic elements and language
Runtime: 100 min
IMDb Rating: 5.1
Rotten Tomatoes: 94%
Metacritic: 80

I remember hearing a lot about this documentary when the word out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it won the U.S. Directing Award, got out. And I was really intrigued as to what it was that made it so celebrated by many at the festival. The Queen of Versailles documented the life of the billionaire Siegel family, as in the one of David Siegel, owner of Westgate Resorts, as they plan to build themselves the second-largest and most-expensive single-family house in America, a 90,ooo square-foot mansion modeled after the Palace of Versailles. But just as they’re beginning construction, the U.S. economy plummets and they must face a real crisis.

The result is actually truly spectacular, you get this truly character-driven storyline with these two people front and center, Mr. Siegel and his wife, Jackie, that are just totally unique characters and that get the movie going along super smoothly. You get to see their huge empire, which was dependent on the real estate bubble and cheap money, start going under just as they were planning their most exuberant display of wealth, and you get to see them deal with this huge economic crisis, and see how it influences their character and lifestyle. It’s a story that displays what’s so great and what’s so bad about the very nature of the American Dream.

I was just totally impressed by what we got here. It’s undoubtedly one of the very best documentaries of the year, one that’s obviously super timely and that has these really rich, and richly-explored characters that will just keep you glued to it, while experiencing at the same time both some kind of guilty pleasure in seeing these people fail as well as some pity and compassion as you see them do just that. I mean, these are people with values that you just have to totally disagree with here, and so seeing them fail gives you some kind of satisfaction, but at the same time you’re just endeared to them and totally entranced by their plight. This compelling stuff, no matter what you might otherwise think going into it.

I just seriously recommend that you seek this one out, to see for yourselves just how infinitely watchable this film is, to see just how it’s unlike anything you could have been expected and how it gets to be so nuanced and have a pathos that you never could anticipate it to posses. It’s just a fascinating story to see this guy who started Westgate Resorts out of his garage and has now made it into the largest time-share company in the world, with annual revenues of close to $1 billion. And then you have Jackie, his third wife, who yes, looks and acts every bit as much as the trophy wife you would expect her to be, but she too came from a humble environment, and worked hard to get an engineering degree.

So it’s really a rags-to-riches story, with the drama being that they may go back to the rags as the recession hits and David’s empire starts crumbling because it subsists on the exact same things the crisis would make unavailable. You just could never expect to be as affected by this story as I promise you will be, and you really have to give huge props to director Lauren Greenfield for so cleverly orchestrating this whole thing.

When David and Jackie speak to us you do go “ugh” as you’d expect after seeing them go for fast food in limo’s or watching Jackie doing a tour of her huge new home while it was under construction and, when asked if the huge place they were standing in was her room, answering “no, it’s my closet”. You do get infuriated because the business that’s making them so damn wealthy is pretty much based off the concept of getting people to spend money on vacations they can’t really afford. And yet when you get to know them, you somehow end up liking them a bit, because they seem super honest, they seem super hard-working, and they really do believe in what they do and don’t seem to be at all hypocritical about it.

That’s probably what surprised me the most while I watched The Queen of Versailles, that the tiniest bit of me liked them. Or, maybe not liked them, but I had definitely gone into the film expecting to hate them, and I didn’t. Once you get to know them, especially Jackie who is ten times better than any of the sitcom characters that are based off people just like her, you’ll realize that you really can’t hate them. I mean, yes, they spend the money they have gotten out of scamming people (though honestly and legally) in things that they seriously don’t need, and you can be mad at them for that, but you can’t really hate them once you know them.

I really loved the hell out of this documentary, it certainly stands as one of the very best this whole year has given us and one that I’ll no doubt recommend like crazy. The ironies that start piling up on the lives of the Siegel’s are just seriously hilarious, and when Ms. Greenfield shows you the extravagance of their lifestyle pre-crisis it really does seem like it was that extravagant and it wasn’t exaggerated for the cameras. This is a film that has all the guilty pleasures of reality television, but at the same time all the best stuff that you would expect from the writers of a great cable comedy, not only because Jackie just says the most ridiculously funny things, but because there’s something deeper to them, which is just surprising as hell, stuff that reinforces the notion that the rich and the poor aren’t that different.

Lauren Greenfield has crafted a tremendous film here, never once feeling as though she was mocking Jackie, but really showing her and her husband as two human beings with real human qualities who are, in essence, chasing after the American Dream (though, granted, their version of an American Dream consists of reconstructing a French Palace). But this is just great, a truly fantastic look into an unbelievable-yet-true story with really rich characters that you’ll actually want to spend even more time with.

Grade: A-

How can they afford this? David Siegal founded Westgate Resorts, the largest, most successful timeshare company in the world. Then he found an engineer-turned-trophy-wife and had seven kids with her. He even brags about being the reason George W. Bush was elected. They have more money than they know what to do with. So they build that dream house, modeled after Louis XIV’s palace, and they take out a mortgage so they can invest more money into the company and build a 54 story complex in Vegas. We cannot believe their excess and pomposity. David even convinces his employees that they are doing work just as important as doctors, firefighters, and policemen.

But then September 2008 comes along, and the stock market crashes. We cannot help but smile, and we laugh when Mrs. Jackie Siegal rents a car and asks for the name of the driver as if it comes with one and when they fly commercial, and we are disgusted that they cutback in important places instead of selling their antiques and by how spoiled the children, who might “have to make their own money now,” are.

But something funny happens. For all their poor judgment, the family seems to be in a genuine struggle. They are “forced” to lay off their maids (were there alternatives? Probably, but that’s not what Greenfield is concerned with) and cannot keep the house clean or the pets fed. David is honestly disappointed that he had to lay off thousands to keep his company afloat. We realize that Jackie truly loves David, has no qualms about downsizing if that’s what it takes, so long as she gets to stay with him. A cynical amusement at their trouble is mixed with genuine compassion, thanks largely to Jackie, who comes off as honest, friendly, and intelligent, even if she struggles to live modestly and is even more out of touch with reality than her single-minded husband.

The family continues to make questionable decisions, but Greenfield’s smartest directorial decision is in never becoming political. Both the banks and David are blamed, but neither excessively. We get the feeling that the rich are not all bad, even if the way the rich go broke is so much different from the way the rest of us do. Instead, The Queen of Versailles becomes a poignant examination of the American Dream, lavishes, unattainability and all. While the Siegals find themselves struggling to downsize Jackie still sends money to an old friend to prevent a home closure. The money is enough, but the bank doesn’t care; as a character from another summer movie remarks, “the rich even go broke different than the rest of us.” One of the Siegal’s made finds that she may never build the house or support her family back in the Philippines in the way that she always promised. Certainly, we feel worse for the maid and the friend than the Siegals, but David, pompous as he is, worked for his fortune, and Jackie dispels gold digger suspicions.

Are we supposed to sympathize or derive a sick sense of pleasure? When they throw a big Christmas party they claim to not afford, and go on shopping sprees, it’s hard not to judge. But again, The Queen of Versailles never gets to political, and that is why it’s so effective. Instead, we find ourselves wondering, as many before us have, what happens to a dream deferred? It turns out it depends on how close you were to that dream in the first place. The Queen is an intensely thought-provoking watch. Even if its preference for laughs over insight won’t make you change your mind about anything, it’s still a unique look at both the American Dream and the financial crisis.

Grade: B

Here’s the official trailer:

When was the last time you saw a piece of art or heard a piece of music that stuck with you days later? I can’t shake this movie from my brain; everything else I read or see seems to echo one of its themes, images, lines.

I’m reading Don DeLillo’s White Noise, and each passage about consumer culture, Americana, perceptions of luxury, etc is reverberating extra hard against the backdrop of Versailles. Then, I read this great New Yorker essay (sadly behind a paywall) about Concord, MA, and the town’s weird peccadillos around wealth and showmanship, and the Versailles bells started bellowing again. And then, this finance newsletter I get had a story about the tiny house movement, about a couple that downsized into 128 square feet in pursuit of the things that truly made them happy. Ding ding ding!

I love this feeling; it’s what I felt like I was always pursuing in college. When the reading from one class informed the lecture of another, and both of those added layers of nuance to the novel I was reading, and all of that seemed related to dining hall convo. It’s a rare but magical perfect storm and I feel like I’m right in the middle of one right now. Crossing my fingers that it lasts for a while.

This intersection of material is all about happiness, finding it, affording it, keeping it, sharing it. How do you tell which path or paths will lead there? Can you buy it? Can you buy access to it? Do I have any answers? Of course not, I’m just enjoying the questions.

Related Post: Another perfect storm, Hans Rosling and Cloud Atlas.

Related Post: Another perfect storm, tigers and grandparents.

Sure enough, Lauren Greenfield’s “The Queen of Versailles” captures billionaire trophy wife Jackie Siegel in all of her ridiculousness.  As if her endless supply of busty hooker outfits for every situation weren’t hysterical enough, Greenfield’s camera always seems to catch her at her best.  Or at her worst, depending on your point of view.

She talks about her obscenely ostentatious new home – which, at 90,000 square feet, is the largest in America – as if it’s a shack, always craving more.  She says that once she realized she could hire nannies to take care of her children for her, she decided she wanted to have seven kids!  She’s the E! reality show character who is too good to be true … but she is!

However, her antics aren’t played solely for “Real Housewives”-style humor; rather, Greenfield uses Jackie as an extreme case to test just how far our notions of the American Dream can extend.  Because by all means, she is living it.  From tenement to mansion is the essence of upward mobility, and Jackie’s transition from modest suburban upbringing to her own private Versailles epitomizes the American ideal.  With a little humility, she could be the poster-child for the American dream.

“The Queen of Versailles” is a powerful examination of the rags-to-riches narrative that dominates our societal mythology, inverting the usually narrative of the Horatio Alger myth by only briefly touching on the rags and focusing predominantly on what the Siegels do with their riches.  We enter the movie with their financial situation untouchable as they zoom around on their private jet, staff 19 people at their tiny 26,000 square foot house, and hubristically begin construction on a palace to rival Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Then, “Inside Job” happens.  The housing bubble bursts, the market drops, and the credit supply shrinks to almost nothing, leaving the Siegel Manor stalled while still in construction.  And very quickly, the Siegels go from being the poster-children of the American Dream to becoming its most high-profile victims.  After all, we are always taught that our ambition should have no limits – but what if that ambition greatly exceeds your means?

No one told Jackie and David Siegel to dial down their dreams, even as their economic conditions just get worse by the minute.  Jackie keeps insisting that they are going to finish Versailles, just as Westgate Resorts mogul David refuses to let go of his crowning achievement, the massive PH Towers in Las Vegas.  Giving up on both projects is the simplest answer because it would alleviate almost all the other financial distress in their life … but it would also mean admitting that they can no longer afford to finance their dreams and that like Icarus, they flew too close to the sun and found the upper limit on ambition.

Really, the reluctance to admit failure is no different than Ben Affleck spurns the idea of selling his Ferarri and giving up the country club membership in “The Company Men.”  What Greenfield is showing us in “The Queen of Versailles” is how the OTHER other half lives during the recession.  Just subtract a few zeros from their bank statement and very little separates them from an average American family; their problems are just a magnified, super-sized version of what many others are currently facing.  They can’t get credit, In spite of all they have, Greenfield actually allows you to start feeling some sympathy for the Siegels.  Jackie starts fretting about the future of her children in a sincere, heartfelt way…

…only to then say, “I told the kids they might have to go to college now, so start thinking about what you want to be when you grow up,” and buy six carts of toys at Wal-Mart, squelching that tiny bit of sympathy.  You can choose to pity the Siegels or scoff at them for thinking they know what the recession feels like, and Greenfield’s ambiguous verdict just makes the documentary all the more potent.  As thoughtful as it is thought-provoking, “The Queen of Versailles” rules the summer … and maybe even the year.  A / 

Throughout Lauren Greenfield’s charming, yet dispiriting, film, The Queen of Versailles, I couldn’t help but come back to the same thought: Are the kids really all right? As these children, all eight of them, walked around their mansion, aimless as robots, I was horrified about how clueless this young generation will be. Perhaps we can find solace in believing this is just a problem of the rich or a problem of the Siegel family specifically, but to me these wandering children were indicative of an entire culture lost in a Gordian knot of economic heartbreak and over-branded happiness.

The film begins by taking us through the lavish life of the Siegel family. David, the founder of Westgate Resorts, the largest time-share company on the planet and his aging, former trophy wife, Jackie. They have just opened the biggest, baddest, and most expensive building in Las Vegas and are halfway through the construction of a home that purports to be the biggest in the United States. Then, with little apparent notice, the bottom falls out. The 2008 collapse hits no market harder than the time-share industry. David almost immediately begins to struggle. But here’s the kicker, he owes almost as much, relative to his earnings, as the poor souls he’s been duping into purchasing his real estate. David Siegel made his fortune by borrowing from the banks, perhaps believing in the same system that was screwing all of his clients. The second half of the movie shows us David trying to keep his business afloat while Jackie and the family learn to “cope” with a budget.

The tale is exemplary of recent American economic efforts and decisions. As we all know, we were spending way above our means and a select few very intelligent people were getting richer and richer because of it. The intrigue of The Queen of Versailles lay in that David doesn’t seem nearly as sleazy or cunning as the world would have us believe about corporate tycoons. In fact, it seems he’s been duped just like the rest of us. Of course, the dichotomy of this notion comes in the form of his lavish home, his wife, his clueless children, and the poor political decisions he made himself a part of. However, Greenfield suggests that Siegel’s intentions were never really to hurt other people, so much as just continue to build a dream for himself. I’d venture to guess that Siegel would be genuinely hurt thinking of all the others who struggled after the collapse. This is not to say he doesn’t share much of the sociopathic cut-throat nature that has flattened our society into a pancake sandwich of McDonald’s and Exxon.

Jackie is really the center of the film but, unfortunately, she doesn’t have much to do. Greenfield’s portrayal of her and her family seems far more like a twisted version of Real Housewives of Orlando than biting non-fiction. She talks, often, superficially about her past, her dreams, how hard she’s worked, etc. Nothing, to me, resonated. I got the feeling that Greenfield felt more sympathy for Jackie than for David, yet David’s situation, in all it’s emasculating, past-macho bravura, felt more honest and understandable. His growing disinterest in the camera being around only intensified the enormous gravity he started to feel about his situation. This is something I never felt about Jackie. In attempting to explore Jackie’s place as a trophy wife, in hopes that audiences might feel for her, I think the result was more insulting than insightful.

This is not to say the film doesn’t succeed on multiple levels. As a metaphor for our times and a colorful character piece, The Queens of Versailles, had more layers than almost anything I’ve seen all year. The problem is that Greenfield loved her characters a little too much, even when there wasn’t anything for them to do. I couldn’t help but feel mystified at why the revelation that Jackie knew so little about how much money was at stake was held until the very end. I suppose the idea was to make this an “A-ha” moment, for us to feel like Jackie was behind a curtain of dreams. But there was poop on the floor and clearly no money coming into the house. She seemed like a mindless blowhard through half of the film. How could she not know what was happening? Are we actually supposed to let her off the hook now? Had this bite come earlier in the piece, we would have been horrified by her decisions, understanding that she simply was hidden from the truth. This storytelling choice was compounded by the decision to tell us so little about the specifics of Westgate’s collapse. Had the financial crisis been clearer, and its lack of clarity to Jackie been obvious, then the film might have had more potency.

Stylistically, The Queens of Versailles, is immensely disappointing. Unlike David LaChappelle’s astonishingly photographed feature, Rize, Greenfield (also a photographer) keeps the camera stilted and almost turned away from poetic images.  The few moments where Greenfield’s photography appears on-screen are breaths of fresh air between the talking head interviews and reality TV, capture-what-you-can, direct cinema. In these photos, we get glimpses of a family desperately trying to feign happiness, but unable to hide the glimmer of sadness sunken under each eye. These are robots and the handful of photographs speak to that in spades.

As a 40-minute short film, The Queens of Versailles, is Oscar material. But the thin storytelling, repetition, uninspired visuals, and occasionally poor narrative choices do not justify the 100-minute runtime. By the time the film was over, I knew I needed to think about saving money a little better. I also got to laugh at a few rich people. I didn’t get the resonance that hit me about the state of our world the way I did with such films as Inside Job and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. The kids are robots and according to The Queens of Versailles, they are miles away from being “all right.” [B]

Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream movies, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.

Countless fairytales about travellers include a scene where a character comes to a fork in the road, and has to decide which way to go. One direction could bring happiness and good fortune; the other way – danger. This week I’m looking at two movies about people making life decisions and where that path takes them. One’s a low-budget American movie about a young, conservative Texan who ends up in liberal Portand, Oregan; the other’s a multi-lingual drama with an international cast about people facing life-changing decisions that end up affecting dozens of strangers they’ll never meet.

360
Dir: Fernando Meirelles

In a series of apparently unrelated stories in Vienna, Paris and London, we see men and women falling in love, and falling out of it, having illicit affairs, purchasing sexual acts, stalking strange women, resisting temptation, breaking up and starting all over again.

(This is a difficult movie to describe without giving away the stories and relationships which provide the main reason for watching this movie… but I’ll try) In just one of the linked stories, a
middle-class, somewhat selfish London couple, (Jude Law and Rachel Weisz) have a fragile relationship but, depending on which direction they each decide to take it, they will affect lots of people – a sex trade worker in Eastern Europe, a Brazilian woman stranded in a US airport (alongside an old man seeking his daughter’s dead body, and a sex offender recently released from prison) as she heads home to Rio.

These and many other stories come looping back in a 360 degree turn, just like the ring roads in the grand European capitals – Vienna, London and Paris. Since these are all strangers who meet at random, we see the characters in hotel bars, airport lobbies, cafes, internet sites, and AA meetings, the sorts of places strangers meet. We get a glimpse of their problems and decisions, then — zoom! — it’s on to the next city.

All the individual stories are loosely woven together, but not in the neat circle the title suggests. It’s not even like the hub in a wheel with lots of spokes heading out. It’s more like throwing a bunch of shoes into a bag, shaking them up, and then wondering how all the laces got so tangled and knotted. It’s definitely interesting, and neat, and the plot is never predictable (lots of the characters don’t take the paths you expect them to)… but I was left wondering if I was duped by complicated junk or had just witnessed a masterpiece. Or more simply: is it a good movie?

A movie doesn’t have to be great and perfect, but this one seems to be a smaller film than the grandiose themes it’s tackling. On the positive side, it’s not encumbered with a weepy, Hollywood violin soundtrack; instead it skips from city to city with old local pop songs. And it does have a great international cast (Jamel Debbouze, etc), a well-known Brazilian director who did City of God, and the UK writer Peter Morgan.

Hmm… is it just pandering, “Oscar Bait”? No, that’s not quite fair, although it does have that grave, sombre tone of too many film festival movies. But it’s also fascinating, a bit thrilling and tense, with a bit if ironic humour. Even if the movie as a whole left me feeling cold and devoid of satisfaction (that 1960’s, angsty European feel) it’s still a unique piece of work.

OK, I give in. I liked it. It wasn’t bad. Go see it.

Blue Like Jazz
Dir: Steve Taylor

Donny (Marshall Allman) is a good Texan. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t cuss. He tucks in his short-sleeved shirt, and goes to Baptist church every Sunday, and does whatever his divorced mother tells him to. But right when he’s about to go off to Baptist College he discovers two things: his layabout Dad who lives in a trailer park is ready to bankroll his tuition at a liberal arts school in Portland(ia); and his bible-ready Mom isn’t quite the goody-goody church lady he thought she was. He decides the church has betrayed him, so he heads off to open his mind to new ideas.

So the movie follows his experiences as a Fresher at college, as he gradually adjusts to student life. He falls in with Lauren (Tania Raymonde), a genuine lesbian who looks like Amy Winehouse; The Pope, an older college rabble-rouser given to dressing in a robe and mitre; and Penny, an earnest politically active blonde woman
who is fighting plastic water bottles. His shirts get untucked, then he switches to T-shirts, stops shaving and soon enough he’s throwing beer bottles out of windows and popping MDMA at outdoor raves. Portland is not without its rules. Umbrellas are considered “uncool” and Penny warns him that, in these parts, Christians are expected to stay in their religious closets – they don’t “come out” as born again.

It’s up to Donny to decide if he should permanently ditch the church in favour of new ideas, or to fall back on his childhood upbringing.

Blue like Jazz is an extremely low-budget drama, paid for through crowd-sourcing. It’s actually a fun, coming-of-age college movie, with interesting characters, a nice story and good acting. Worth watching.

Also opening this weekend are the two documentaries The Invisible War, and The Queen of Versailles.

The Invisible War (Dir: Kirby Dick) tells about the estimated one million rapes or sexual assaults that have happened within the US armed forces over the past half century, how the perpetrators are let off even as the victims face punishment. It’s an important look at a shocking subject. (Listen to my interview with director Kirby Dick)

And on a much lighter note, is the Queen of Versailles, a hilarious documentary by Lauren Greenfield about a pneumatically equipped compulsive shopper with many children and little yappy dogs; and her husband, an elderly time-share mogul, who, together, attempt to build themselves a replica of the Palace of Versailles in the Florida everglades — the biggest home in the world — but are caught in a lurch by the sudden bursting of the real estate bubble. (Read my Hotdocs review here.)

The dramas 360 and Blue Like Jazz, and the documentaries The Invisible War and the Queen of Versailles all open today in Toronto – check your local listings.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com .