Imperial Princess

Iulia lives alone in Monaco since her father left, who returned to Russia due to sanctions against their country. She no longer attends school. She feels increasingly lonely and threatened.

Virgil Vernier shot Imperial Princess on the fly, in parallel to preparing his third feature film (alongside many other short, documentary, or hybrid formats). The film is framed as a springtime diary written by the protagonist, Iulia, a young Russian woman who has decided to stay in Monaco after her parents’ hasty departure, brought on by the fear of sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine. “Imperial Princess” could be the name of the yacht they narrowly managed to smuggle out to Dubai. It is also an apt name for a protagonist who claims not to need anyone, cooped up as she is in a gilded cage—or perhaps in a house of mirrors, filled with the hostile presences that lurk behind the one-way mirrors. In keeping with Vernier’s usual style, the rawness of the material is tinged with a heady fairy-tale beauty, and the images exhale a deathly fragrance. There is tell that the sovereign himself has poisoned the lush fruits that hang on the trees of the principality so that no one will pick them. Shot on a smartphone with meticulous care, the film shows a world of opulence in disguise: a house of cards styled as a sumptuous palace; a world trapped in vain eternity and contaminated by the poison of illusory comfort. As Monaco gets ready to host its annual Formula One Grand Prix, and rubber can be heard screeching on the asphalt, its residents inhale the toxic fumes of their own entertainment: a glitzy and unsustainable world from which we’d like the protagonist to wake up.

Antoine Thirion