The Queen of Versailles

Born into a home where she had to queue to use the shared toi­let, Jacque­line Mallery always want­ed more. Refus­ing to set­tle for medi­oc­rity, Jack­ie ditched her sub par digs and mar­ried David Siegel – mul­ti-mil­lion­aire CEO and own­er of West­gate Resorts, the largest pri­vate­ly held time­share com­pa­ny in the world. 

The Siegels became a cou­ple who were addict­ed to excess. They have eight chil­dren, twice as many pets, and trucks and trucks of mon­ey. They are the anti­heroes of Lau­ren Greenfield’s shock­ing doc­u­men­tary, The Queen of Versailles.

When Greenfield’s film kicks off in 2007, Jack­ie and David are embark­ing upon their biggest expense to date – the con­struc­tion of a dream home based on ​‘Sun King’ Louis XIV’s ultra-plush Palace of Ver­sailles. Once fin­ished, the 90,000 square foot prop­er­ty promised to be the largest pri­vate­ly owned home in Amer­i­ca with (among oth­er things) three pools, a ball­room com­plete with stained-glass sky­light and 30 bath­rooms. So: no more queue­ing for Jackie…

Devel­op­ment of the knock-off château is in full swing when the eco­nom­ic cri­sis hits, set­ting the stage for a ​‘rags-to-rich­es-to-rags’ tale. As the Siegels strug­gle to main­tain the lifestyle to which they’ve become accus­tomed, their cur­rent home becomes dilap­i­dat­ed, the unfin­ished palace becomes derelict and the Siegels them­selves become a metaphor for the ineluctable fate of Amer­i­can civilisation.

The Queen of Ver­sailles shrewd­ly catch­es the seem­ing­ly inde­struc­tible Siegels as their empire crum­bles around them to reveal the con­sumerist rot fes­ter­ing beneath a shiny façade. Through the micro­cosm of one fam­i­ly, Greenfield’s doc­u­men­tary makes for a brac­ing exam­ple of how greed can stain a per­son so deeply that redemp­tion or apol­o­gy can become lost even when faced with bru­tal per­son­al comeuppance.

Word on the street is that since film­ing wrapped in 2011 Siegel’s busi­ness has tak­en an upturn and the con­struc­tion of ​‘Ver­sailles’ is back on – a stark reminder that life is always unpre­dictable, but rarely fair.