THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES

This is an extraordinarily wonderful documentary that followed obnoxious billionaire timeshare mogul David Segal and his pampered blonde trophy wife Jackie as their life of sheer excess starts to crumble around them. The story starts pre-2008 when everything in their Florida mansion was so rosy for them and their seven small spoilt-to-death children and whole menagerie of animals that including countless yapping dogs who pooped everywhere. However they, and their 19 staff, had outgrown the place so the Segals were now building the largest single house in the US. Planned to be over 90000 sq feet with some 38 bathrooms alone. It was inspired styled by the French Grand Palais, but actually they copied the top three floors of the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas!

Their lives are reeling with such outrageous bad bad taste, that they actually make those wretched Kardashians look like a Class Act. Imagine that! Jackie’s breasts also match the size of her house , and she is also ‘The Queen of Fur Coat & No Knickers Brigade’ (she actually wears one in the Florida heat … a fur coat that is!). Then when the ‘crash’ happens and the unfinished ‘Versailles’ is facing foreclosure, they only have 4 house staff, and Mr. Siegel is fighting hard to hang on to his business, but Jackie is still out shopping. Not Chanel this time, but actually Walmart where she still manages to fill four shopping carts with more toys that the kids really do not need. The hilarious film is compulsive viewing and is peppered with some priceless quotes …. like when Jackie is talking about her annoyance that the Stimulus Money that Obama gave to the Banks was intended to pass on to the common people like them without a hint of irony. And on that basis she would deserve a lot, because she is dead common!

I loved every single minute of it

(Reprinted from my Sundance 2012 Blog)

★★★★★★★★★★