As the documentary Melania prepared to debut on Friday, its promotional posters across Los Angeles were vandalized with graffiti that transformed Melania Trump into a kind of Third Reich Barbie. She was accessorized with a drawn-on Hitler moustache and rechristened “Eva Braun.” A subtle touch.

A better comparison, made painfully obvious by watching Melania, is Marie Antoinette, and the Trumps as the decadent French monarchy. Marie Antoinette didn’t design the ancien régime or engineer France’s late eighteenth-century fiscal collapse. History remembers her less for governance than for her vibe: the garish gowns, the immaculate gardens, the lavish parties, and her refusal to cut expenses as the peasants starved. Melania Trump, as captured in this film, is her spiritual successor, albeit one who prefers Botox to bustles and Manhattan penthouses to the Petit Trianon; a decorative emblem of a ruling class that has retreated into self-absorbed aesthetics even as the streets beneath it seethe.

The documentary is framed as a behind-the-scenes look at the real Melania in the three weeks leading up to the 2025 presidential inauguration, but there’s almost comically little revealed about the life and personal politics of our two-time first lady. We learn that she loves her mother, her son Barron, and the music of Michael Jackson. For much of the run time, Melania glides from vast gold-embossed rooms in glass towers to limos to private jets to fly to manicured estates in Mar-a-Lago or ritzy ballrooms in Washington, DC, in impossibly expensive gowns crafted by her small army of designers and attendants. It’s all framed as if she were a luxury brand ambassador for MAGA’s imperial America.