NYICFF Review: My Life in Versailles is a charming collection of tiny tales

My Life in Versailles started as a short film back in 2019, about a young girl who goes to live with her uncle, a former dancer who is now a custodian/groundskeeper at the historical French palace. That short became a 6-episode TV series, which has now been adapted into a supremely charming feature adaptation which held its US premiere yesterday at the New York International Children's Film Festival.

That you can feel its origins is, for me, one of the film's strengths. My Life in Versailles moves along at such a breezy clip as it moves from episode to episode. You can pretty much feel where one ends and the next begins. Now it's the Christmas episode. Now it's the school play episode. And so on and so forth. The film is a collection of little plots, each one cute and sweet and with good lessons to learn. Taken together, they form a nice narrative framework for the more compelling character arc Violette goes through.

Violette becomes a ward of the state, and then moves in with uncle Regis, following her parents' death in a terrorist attack. That's a heavy burden for a child to carry, a tremendous loss. Obviously, it leads to her lashing out. She calls her uncle stinky, regularly runs away from school, and declares that she wants to live with her grandparents instead. Of course, she softens as she and Regis start to learn how their lives might more easily fit together. So much of the film ties back to a sort of re-discovery of childhood for Violette. She carries a lot of anxiety and dread, and finds herself fretting over the problems of the adults in her life, especially Regis. For his part, her uncle wants her to let go of those worries, and to just focus on the goal of growing up.

Which she does, in fits and starts, over the course of the film. Violette is headstrong and smart, and it's a joy to watch her start to let her guard down, and to let love in. During one particularly memorable sequence, the ghost of Louis XIV tells her that the way to combat the sadness of loss is through love. Violette seems to really take this to heart, as she bonds with Regis, her friends, other employees at Versailles, and an adorable mouse who lives in her bedroom wall.

My Life in Versailles is so beautiful to look at. The line work has an elegant simplicity to it, bringing this world and these characters to life so sweetly and artfully. It looks like illustrations from a children's book or a magazine come to life, with extremely well-defined characters and rougher, unfussy details in the backgrounds. 

It's also just such a wonderful setting for a story. It taps into your inner child to watch Violette wander the vast gardens or ride her bike through the nighttime halls of the palace. As someone who proposed in the gardens at Versailles, I was very happy to spend time these via this animated avenue.

One of the film's thematic threads is the ways we look back and look ahead. Violette and her best friend, Malcom, are obsessed with Egyptian mythology. Olga, one of the other caretakers at Versailles, talks about her her work serves History, a sentiment that deeply resonates with Violette. Regis spends time looking back on his days as a dancer, when he was young and his body worked properly. It feels like a lifetime ago. And, of course, much time is spent reminiscing about Violette's late parents, gone too soon.

All of these people and forces and events that came before form the world in which Violette now lives, struggles, and excels. It's a miracle the world exists as it does right now, with all of the pieces on the board in this exact arrangement. For Violette, there are surely things she wishes she could change, but with her curious mind and ever-opening heart, she realizes that her life at Versailles is one that's pretty magical, and that's she's lucky to be there. I feel lucky to have gotten to bear witness.