Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
With the epic dimensions of a Shakespearean tragedy, The Queen of Versailles follows billionaires Jackie and David’s rags-to-riches story to uncover the innate virtues and flaws of their American dream. We open on the triumphant construction of the biggest house in America, a sprawling, 90,000-square-foot mansion inspired by Versailles. Since a booming time-share business built on the real-estate bubble is financing it, the economic crisis brings progress to a halt and seals the fate of its owners. We witness the impact of this turn of fortune over the next two years in a riveting film fraught with delusion, denial, and self-effacing humor.
The Queen of Versailles is a compelling documentary that benefits enormously from fortunate timing — the 2008 financial crisis arrived mid-production and transformed what might have been a straightforward portrait of excess into something far more revealing. Jackie Siegel emerges as an unexpectedly sympathetic and self-aware subject, lending the film genuine emotional texture. The cinematography is competent but unremarkable for the genre. The narrative arc has Shakespearean overtones the filmmakers rightly lean into, though the plotting is somewhat beholden to real-life pacing. The ending, dictated by reality rather than craft, feels unresolved and anticlimactic — the story simply stops without dramatic or thematic closure. Novelty is moderate: the subject matter and framing are distinctive enough, but the documentary form itself is conventional observational filmmaking. Overall a well-above-average documentary anchored by an extraordinary subject but not exceptional in execution.