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“THIS won’t be a big part of my story,” I assured Lauren Greenfield. “But can you tell me a little bit about the lawsuit?”


It was the usual prerelease scene: a reporter and a filmmaker, sitting in a Midtown restaurant, talking about her forthcoming movie. Known primarily as a photographer, Ms. Greenfield, 45, had spent much of the last three years shooting and editing “The Queen of Versailles,” a documentary whose boilerplate description — a wealthy Florida couple tries to build America’s largest house in Orlando — doesn’t do justice to the jaw-dropping scenes of consumption and comeuppance that, writ large, strangely mirror the fortunes of less extravagant Americans. With her movie set for release on July 20, the time had come for Ms. Greenfield to promote it.


Most of the interview revolved around the film and, more broadly, Ms. Greenfield’s approach to both filmmaking and photography. Her photography, she said, was “sociologically themed,” with an emphasis on consumerism and cultural values. “The Queen of Versailles,” she added, was very much of a piece with her body of work: “What drew me to this subject was that I got interested in the idea of a house as the ultimate expression of the American Dream.” She said she hoped that audiences would see the film not so much as a case study in how the wealthy live but rather as a metaphor for how we all lived — and thought, and acted — during the giddy years of the housing bubble, and the painful ones that followed.


Ms. Greenfield raved about Jackie and David Siegel, the couple at the center of the movie. Jackie, a 46-year-old former model, is 31 years younger than David, the billionaire founder of Westgate Resorts, “the largest privately owned time-share company in the world,” as he says in the movie. They have eight children (including a niece of Jackie’s, whom they are raising), four dogs and, despite their wealth, very little pretension.


“One of the things that appealed to me about Jackie and David is that because they come from humble origins, they had a generosity of spirit that allowed me to get to know them,” Ms. Greenfield said.


Every few months Ms. Greenfield and her small crew would essentially move in for a few days, doing interviews and playing fly on the wall. She came to like Jackie very much, and to respect David.


So it was more than a little painful when, on the eve of the film’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January — an event Mrs. Siegel attended — David Siegel sued Ms. Greenfield for defamation. His original complaint focused on the Sundance publicity materials, which inaccurately described his company as collapsing. But even after Ms. Greenfield and Sundance tweaked the language, Mr. Siegel didn’t drop the lawsuit. Instead he filed a broader complaint, alleging that “The Queen of Versailles” depicts Westgate Resorts “in an array of defamatory, derogatory and damaging ways.”


When I asked Ms. Greenfield about the lawsuit, she reiterated her fondness for her subjects, and then let out a small sigh. “You should probably talk to our lawyer about the details,” she said.


THE OPENING SCENES give no hint that “The Queen of Versailles” will have any message other than F. Scott Fitzgerald’s: The rich are different from you and me. While their 90,000-square-foot dream house is under construction, the Siegels make do with a 26,000-square-foot home. They employ a staff of 19. Opening her closet, Mrs. Siegel exclaims happily, “I have a $17,000 pair of Gucci crocodile boots.”


The source of the family’s wealth is Mr. Siegel’s time-share company, which operates more than two dozen resorts around the country and which, to be brutally honest, has much in common with the subprime mortgage industry, selling people vacation time shares many can’t really afford. Mr. Siegel has just completed his greatest resort yet, a 52-story property in Las Vegas called the PH Towers Westgate, in which he has invested more than $400 million of his own money.


As for Versailles — and yes, that’s what the Siegels call the enormous home they are building — it is half-finished when the movie opens. With the camera tagging along, Mrs. Siegel takes a friend on a tour. “Is this your room?” the friend asks as they walk toward a cavernous space. “It’s my closet,” she replies. She and her husband explain to Ms. Greenfield that they didn’t set out to build America’s biggest house, but after they’d included everything they both wanted — the bowling alley, the 10 kitchens, the health spa — it just turned out that way.


What then happens to the Siegels — and what gives the film its tension — is what happened to so many Americans: the housing bubble burst. Westgate Resorts is forced to lay off thousands of employees. Mr. Siegel has to halt construction on Versailles and put it on the market. Four months after PH Towers opens, the film notes ominously, the company that built it “sues Westgate for unpaid bills.”