The Queen of Versailles (2012)
Country: US/NL/GB/DK
Technical: col 103m
Director: Lauren Greenfield
Cast: Jackie Siegel, David Siegel
Synopsis:
Florida's time-share king and his beauty queen trophy wife plan and half-build a mansion with 31 bathrooms paradoxically inspired by Versailles, which probably had none, whose final 's' the protagonists have the annoying habit of pronouncing. Then the 2008 sub-prime meltdown hits America, and Siegel's banks no longer want to lend his clients the 90% share of their time-share apartments in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Jackie tries to put on a brave face and goes shopping.
Review:
There are more dramatic exposés of what happened around sub-prime (cf. The Big Short, 99 Homes, Margin Call), but this painful documentary illustrates admirably what is wrong with American consumerism. It's all a little one-note, and the director seems to be unduly concerned to set off Ms Siegel's prodigious bosom to best advantage, but whereas one might expect to crow or snigger, in fact the principal response is sadness. You have Mr Siegel, who is simply so lost not making money out of money, he doesn't know what to do with himself; Mrs Siegel, blithely optimistic and devoted to her dysfunctional husband, and gamely buying more animals no one in the household seems able to look after; the Philippino nanny, who has never seen her own children grow up, but continues to send money home in the hope that they will have more than a piece of corrugated iron to stand up in, and lives in the Siegel children's old wendy house; and finally the teenage stepdaughter, brought up in poverty and accustomed to riches, who now doesn't know whether she is coming or going. Looming over all this is the Versailles-Xanadu monstrosity that no one needs, but that the Siegels will still not give up to the bank, even though they cannot finish it, a monument to Mammon made of concrete and girders, a sham like the American philosophy it embodies.
Country: US/NL/GB/DK
Technical: col 103m
Director: Lauren Greenfield
Cast: Jackie Siegel, David Siegel
Synopsis:
Florida's time-share king and his beauty queen trophy wife plan and half-build a mansion with 31 bathrooms paradoxically inspired by Versailles, which probably had none, whose final 's' the protagonists have the annoying habit of pronouncing. Then the 2008 sub-prime meltdown hits America, and Siegel's banks no longer want to lend his clients the 90% share of their time-share apartments in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Jackie tries to put on a brave face and goes shopping.
Review:
There are more dramatic exposés of what happened around sub-prime (cf. The Big Short, 99 Homes, Margin Call), but this painful documentary illustrates admirably what is wrong with American consumerism. It's all a little one-note, and the director seems to be unduly concerned to set off Ms Siegel's prodigious bosom to best advantage, but whereas one might expect to crow or snigger, in fact the principal response is sadness. You have Mr Siegel, who is simply so lost not making money out of money, he doesn't know what to do with himself; Mrs Siegel, blithely optimistic and devoted to her dysfunctional husband, and gamely buying more animals no one in the household seems able to look after; the Philippino nanny, who has never seen her own children grow up, but continues to send money home in the hope that they will have more than a piece of corrugated iron to stand up in, and lives in the Siegel children's old wendy house; and finally the teenage stepdaughter, brought up in poverty and accustomed to riches, who now doesn't know whether she is coming or going. Looming over all this is the Versailles-Xanadu monstrosity that no one needs, but that the Siegels will still not give up to the bank, even though they cannot finish it, a monument to Mammon made of concrete and girders, a sham like the American philosophy it embodies.
Country: US/NL/GB/DK
Technical: col 103m
Director: Lauren Greenfield
Cast: Jackie Siegel, David Siegel
Synopsis:
Florida's time-share king and his beauty queen trophy wife plan and half-build a mansion with 31 bathrooms paradoxically inspired by Versailles, which probably had none, whose final 's' the protagonists have the annoying habit of pronouncing. Then the 2008 sub-prime meltdown hits America, and Siegel's banks no longer want to lend his clients the 90% share of their time-share apartments in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Jackie tries to put on a brave face and goes shopping.
Review:
There are more dramatic exposés of what happened around sub-prime (cf. The Big Short, 99 Homes, Margin Call), but this painful documentary illustrates admirably what is wrong with American consumerism. It's all a little one-note, and the director seems to be unduly concerned to set off Ms Siegel's prodigious bosom to best advantage, but whereas one might expect to crow or snigger, in fact the principal response is sadness. You have Mr Siegel, who is simply so lost not making money out of money, he doesn't know what to do with himself; Mrs Siegel, blithely optimistic and devoted to her dysfunctional husband, and gamely buying more animals no one in the household seems able to look after; the Philippino nanny, who has never seen her own children grow up, but continues to send money home in the hope that they will have more than a piece of corrugated iron to stand up in, and lives in the Siegel children's old wendy house; and finally the teenage stepdaughter, brought up in poverty and accustomed to riches, who now doesn't know whether she is coming or going. Looming over all this is the Versailles-Xanadu monstrosity that no one needs, but that the Siegels will still not give up to the bank, even though they cannot finish it, a monument to Mammon made of concrete and girders, a sham like the American philosophy it embodies.