College students and elderly people alike quickly filled Jesse Auditorium and chatted as a four-member band played folk music to pass the time before the showing of The Queen of Versailles at the True/False Film Festival.
The film opens as Jackie Siegel poses seductively on the lap of her husband, David Siegel, and a photographer takes pictures of them.
David, 74, and Jackie, 44, have eight children and a house of 26,000 square feet, which Jackie describes as “bursting at the seams.”
This large, wealthy family decides to build what would become the largest home in America at 90,000 square feet. As images of a room filled with $5 million works of marble appear on screen, incredulous gasps echo throughout Jesse Auditorium.
“This is, like, the nicest, grandest house in all of the United States right here,” Jackie says about the house inspired by the Palace of Versailles in France.
However the plot takes a twist when David, owner of Westgate timeshares, finds himself in financial trouble. He can no longer afford to keep his company running and lays off 7,000 employees.
Although this film contains images of a grand, luxurious house, it also manages to capture the brokenness of the family inside it. “Nothing makes me happy these days,” David says at one point.
David often comes home from work and refuses to eat dinner with the family. In one scene the couple’s teenage daughter, Victoria, goes into David’s study room and yells at her father for treating Jackie rudely and for not eating the meal they had prepared for him. During this scene Jackie stands by silently, watching her daughter stick up for her. When Victoria storms out of the room, she says that she hates her dad.
One particularly heart-wrenching scene shows one of the sons going into his dad’s study to tell him, “I love you.” David pauses before replying, “Thanks. If you love me, you’ll turn off the lights.”
The audience gasped and laughed repeatedly throughout the movie at the ridiculous life of the Siegel family.
When the movie ended after about an hour and 40 minutes, director Lauren Greenfield, who is known for her documentaries Thin and Kids + Money, came out for a brief Q & A session. Greenfield says her film is an allegory for the overreaching of America. “I was interested in telling a story that really wasn’t about rich people but about America,” Greenfield says.
She says that Jackie had seen the film, laughed at some parts but found other parts sad. David has not yet seen the film, and Greenfield says they were arranging a time for him to see it. “I was grateful for what had happened,” Greenfield says. “I think it really humanized Jackie and David as characters.”