Die Pompadour: A Bit Too Much Powder and Not Enough Punch

Is it worth the time?

Honestly, only if you have a very specific craving for old-school European melodrama. If you like your history books dry and your movies dripping with polite, stiff-upper-lip court drama, you might get a kick out of this. If you need pacing that doesn't feel like watching paint dry on a velvet curtain, you’re going to hate it. 😴

Die Pompadour is one of those movies that feels like it was filmed inside a very expensive, very cramped jewelry box. Everything is shiny, everyone is wearing way too much lace, and nobody seems to be having an actual human conversation.

Käthe von Nagy is trying her best to carry the whole thing. She has this look in her eyes during the ballroom scenes that screams, 'I would rather be literally anywhere else,' which, to be fair, is a mood I deeply empathized with by the forty-minute mark.

The Tangents

There’s a moment involving a misplaced letter that drags on for what feels like an entire geological era. The camera just sits there, watching a character reach for a desk. It’s not building tension. It’s just... waiting. I found myself counting the number of candles in the background just to stay awake.

It’s weirdly similar in tone to the stuff you see in Le prince Jean, where everything is so calculated and 'proper' that the life gets sucked right out of the room. It’s all very polite. Nobody ever trips, nobody drops a glass, and God forbid anyone actually speaks above a whisper.

I caught myself thinking about The Blood of a Poet halfway through, mainly because I was wishing for even a fraction of that movie's chaos to disrupt this static, gilded cage of a production. At least there, stuff actually happens.

Final thoughts, or whatever

• The wigs are genuinely distracting. I spent ten minutes wondering how they don't fall off during the dancing.
• The dialogue is so formal it might as well be in a different language even when you understand the words.
• I think one of the extras in the background of the garden scene just forgot how to walk.

It’s not a bad movie, really. It’s just... beige. It’s a beautifully lit, expertly costumed, and ultimately quite boring trip into a past that probably wasn't this polished in real life. If you watch it, maybe keep a book nearby. You're gonna need it. 🕯️