Kings and Queen - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution movie review

Complicated 'Kings and Queen' is worth the effort

By BOB LONGINO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The very talky, very French and tres excellent "Kings and Queen" is about one modern-day woman and four guys — her aging father, young son, former lover and earlier former lover.

If that sounds complicated, so is the film. Director Arnaud Desplechin weaves parallel story arcs and alternates between heartbreaking drama and bust-a-gut comedy. It's an almost diabolical view of male-female relationships told in frank speech and rampant symbolism.

Wellspring Media

'Kings and Queen'

The verdict: A complicated, vibrant, must-see relationship comedy-drama.

Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Starring: Maurice Garrel, Nathalie Boutefeu, Magali Woch, Hippolyte Girardot, Noemie Lvovsky
Run time: 150 minutes
Release date: May 13, 2005
Rating: Not Rated Language: In French with subtitles.

Heck, it even starts with narration involving the Greek myth Leda and the Swan, in which, of course, Zeus transformed himself into a regal bird and raped the lovely Leda.

Our heroine, Nora, beautiful, 35 and an art gallery manager in Paris, procures a centuries-old depiction of the act and gives it to her father for his birthday.

In other words, we're in for a long (at two and a half hours) but enveloping head-trip of a movie.

Eventually we learn Nora's father is severely ill, her former lover is carted off against his will to a mental instution and the lover before him is dead.

"Queen" is blessed with wonderful actors. The effervescent Emmanuelle Devos ("Read My Lips") plays Nora with emotional abandon while the forceful Mathieu Amalric ("My Sex Life") portrays her previous lover Ismael, the manic violist with a noose dangling from his living room ceiling. (That bit of rope helps buy him a stint in a mental ward.) Much of the film's comic relief comes in his attempts to procure a release.

While these characters' lives are melodramatic, individual scenes burst with kinetic energy from fast editing and an script that deftly underscores the destructive nature of male-female relationships.

No scene is better than the director's dark, Bergman-like moment — a beautifully realized sequence in which Nora's father (Maurice Garrel) matter-of-factly reveals his harshest opinion of his daughter.

The scene's verbal violence may constitute the most heartbreaking moment on film in years.

If one has a quibble with "Queen," it may be the length Desplechin goes to to have his film conclude on a hopeful note.

Still, like the rest of the film, that scene is beautifully written — a treatise of sorts on how to maneuver through relationships and emerge, well, less scathed.