The Queen of Versailles

This documentary is a fascinating set of studies – greed, the absurdity of The American Dream, the inability to buy taste and the false foundations for love. There’s more in it besides all of that.

Jackie and David Siegel lived a billionaire life with a huge personal staff doing the parenting job for their eight children as they fly private, take limos to McDonald’s and plan their 30-bathroom dream home – The Biggest House in America. The current digs just couldn’t cut it, only a dozen bathrooms you see.

If you hate Jackie straight away – for her naive-to-the-point-of-insulting view of their extreme wealth, the garish photos that deck the halls of their home and the bum that surgeons have placed on her chest – you’ll find David harder to take. A cross between Hugh Hefner and Donald Trump – in both looks and attitude – he’s “changed a lot of people’s lives” if he does say so himself (and he does). He’s made life pretty good for a lot of people. So good that when his sons fly domestic with their mother they ask what all “these other people” are doing on their plane.

Siegel made his millions and millions by running huge time-shares, signing up people to holidays bought in advance with money they don’t have. He kept buying more properties and creating new holiday destinations with money he didn’t have.

It would have been a great documentary anyway – the greed, the wealth, the lack of modesty/humility, the awful, ugly taste, the ultimate irony of someone getting super-rich off selling an ideal of wealth to others – him sitting on his (actual) throne as he chats so frankly about his own brilliance, her like his lapdog, someone’s bum on her chest. The house they were building so stupid with its sushi bar, bowling alley, baseball diamond…

But then there’s the financial crash. And the film gets really good.

Siegel is under pressure – the global financial crisis hits this billionaire hard. Suddenly it’s the banks’ fault for making false promises. The guy that’s been signing people up to holidays they may never actually have says this without a hint of irony. Donald Trump’s tower gets to keep shining on the Las Vegas Strip, Siegel’s gets its light shut off.

If he has to live to 150 to figure a way out of this hole he’ll do that.

Meanwhile the trophy wife keeps spending.

Staff are laid off and the dogs shit all over the floor and no one knows how to pick up dogshit because they’ve never been taught; never needed to. A lizard dies and no one seemed to know they had one in the house.

Through all this you see the love that David and Jackie apparently shared suddenly – rapidly – disappear as she tries her best to continue wearing inappropriate outfits on a budget and he gets mad at everyone in the house for leaving the lights on.

The film is the best kind of reality TV – in that it never treats the audience like idiots; the camera roves and captures so many wonderful (should-have-been-hidden/private) moments. But it never (really) exploits. It just serves up ironies.

Good for people to see the really rich doing it tough too – because, say what you like about their extreme wealth and their absurd lack of subtlety – this was a huge lifestyle change; the toll of stress is palpable.

And somehow you find yourself sympathising – or close to it – with these filthy rich ghastly people.

A fascinating film. It stands up to repeated viewings.