In her staggering film about the controversial former Philippine
first lady, the acclaimed
Queen of Versailles film-maker faces her most difficult subject yet
At the heart of Lauren Greenfield’s body of work, varied in form from photography to writing to film-making yet remarkably consistent in theme, lies a conundrum. From its very outset, her career has revolved around the trappings of extreme wealth, from the ultra-privileged children of the
Los Angeles upper-crusters in her early exhibitions to a pair of nouveau-riche homebuilders for her 2012 documentary breakout The Queen of Versailles. She’s fascinated with the grotesquerie and garishness of new money, watching from a clinical remove as her subjects expose the most tacky, contemptible, pathetic sides of themselves. She’s renowned as a chronicler of the morally deformed, a diagnostic for the deleterious effects that a swollen bank account can have on the brain.
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