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Arnaud Desplechin s stunning film interweaves two stories, that of Nora (Emmanuelle Devos), a single mother about to marry for the third time, with the tale of her eccentric ex-husband Ismael (Mathieu Amalric), committed to a psychiatric ward by mistake and convinced of his own tragic destiny. Their lives intersect once more when Nora, troubled by her young son s uneasy relationship with her new fiance and the failing health of her father, visits Ismael with an unusual proposition she hopes will solve her problems. Wonderfully played by Devos and Amalric, with a fine cameo from Catherine Deneuve as an ice-cool psychiatrist, Kings and Queen is an intricate, funny and moving epic that explores the complexities of life, love and family ties.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
In this film we follow two parallell stories showing the lives of two people, each accompanied by it's own type of music, highlighting their different tones and ways. The lives of these two people are revealed to stand in a special relationship to each other, which eventually brings them into the same scene, and not by chance. At the end they also appear together, yet apart. The explanation of this apartness is revealed, puzzling all the different bits of the film together, affectuating a sort of catharsis. The film is truly brilliantly constructed by an integration of form and content. It is the story of a man and a woman who's lives are separate yet belong together in some special way. Part of plot cirles around her desire to tie him to her son. The matter is considered forwards and back, while the lives of the two main characters each proceed in their own directions. The film is long, but it's one of those rare films you just want to go on. Perhaps partly because of the captivating beauty and intruiging personalities of the main characters, (I must admit I fell in love with Mathieu Amalric - or perhaps Ismael), but also the great music, the excellent repertoir of characters, and the way in which they are presented, never entirely revealed at first, but slowly unravelled with exciting surprises. The film has humour, depth and aesthetic appeal. To me it felt like it was everything which every film aims to be.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
This is the complex story of Nora (Emmanuelle Devos) exploring a short traumatic period in her life when embarking on her third marriage, trying to arrange for her divorced second husband to adopt her boy Elias (Valentine Lelong) a child from her first marriage who has identified with her second husband Ismael (Mathieu Amalric), whilst dealing with the shock of learning her father has only five to ten days to live due to a rampant form of cancer.
Ismael is having a difficult time as he is suddenly confined to a mental institution for devious reasons that I never managed to understand, except he ends up loosing everything.
The finest scene is the film is when Ismael is explaining to Elias why he cannot adopt him, a masterly piece of cutting making a long difficult piece of dialogue absorbing.
The direction of Arnaud Desplechin keeps this broiling cauldron of a story under control and understandable, with Devos and Amalric being particularly fine in their complex roles.
This is an excellent French film for those prepared to spend the effort needed to follow all the twist and turns of the plot.
Ismael is having a difficult time as he is suddenly confined to a mental institution for devious reasons that I never managed to understand, except he ends up loosing everything.
The finest scene is the film is when Ismael is explaining to Elias why he cannot adopt him, a masterly piece of cutting making a long difficult piece of dialogue absorbing.
The direction of Arnaud Desplechin keeps this broiling cauldron of a story under control and understandable, with Devos and Amalric being particularly fine in their complex roles.
This is an excellent French film for those prepared to spend the effort needed to follow all the twist and turns of the plot.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
There is a chilling scene towards the end of the brilliant, acidic and poetic "Kings and Queen" which shoots a flaming arrow through the heart of any notion that we may have that this film is in any way melodramatic or sentimental (the movie begins and ends with "Moon River"): Nora (the amazing Emmanuelle Devos) comes upon a passage in her dead father, Louis's diary in which he writes about her and among other very cold and brutally honest things, he writes: "I hate that you will survive me...I wish that you were the one dying...I hate you." Couple this with Louis' admission that, since his wife, Nora's mother was sick for a long time, he fell in love with Nora and that she took advantage of his feelings for her...in essence she seduced him. Incest? I'm not sure.
Director Arnaud Desplechin shoots this scene both in color (Nora reading) and in flickering, silent film style black and white (Louis reciting his diary): this simple set up is so effective and so truthful that you gasp with recognition and understanding. Desplechin is dealing with the basic things of life here and what better in this scene than "the thin line between love and hate?"
Desplechin is telling two stories here: one with Nora (and this Nora shares many qualities with Ibsen's Nora...i.e.....she recreates herself during the course of this film) and that of Ismael (the formidable Mathieu Almaric): a former lover of Nora's and a man who is bi-polar, though I prefer the old name for this disease, manic depression which more perfectly describes Ismael.
Nora spends the entire film looking for a father for her child, Elias and Ismael spends the entire film looking for a safe place for himself. One of the most interesting things about this film is that out-of-control Ismael has a big, loving family who surround him with an all-encompassing warm fog of positivism while the controlled, "my father always taught me to control my emotions" Nora really has no one except her son. Nora and Ismael's worlds are opposite of the supposed natural order of things: aren't the well-loved and cared for supposed to be "sane" while the ill nurtured are more often, "crazy?"
Desplechin is dealing with so many things here: mental illness, paternal and maternal love and all its variations, drug addiction, the elements of psychiatric care, male/female relationships and on and on that it took me several viewings to begin to digest and understand all the things with which Desplechin has stuffed his film.
"Kings and Queen" is palpably disturbing on many levels. It is not a comfortable, easily definable film. It's emotions and feelings are sometimes so brutally honest that they physically hurt. But like Nora and Ismael if you survive the ordeal ...you will be better and smarter for it.
Director Arnaud Desplechin shoots this scene both in color (Nora reading) and in flickering, silent film style black and white (Louis reciting his diary): this simple set up is so effective and so truthful that you gasp with recognition and understanding. Desplechin is dealing with the basic things of life here and what better in this scene than "the thin line between love and hate?"
Desplechin is telling two stories here: one with Nora (and this Nora shares many qualities with Ibsen's Nora...i.e.....she recreates herself during the course of this film) and that of Ismael (the formidable Mathieu Almaric): a former lover of Nora's and a man who is bi-polar, though I prefer the old name for this disease, manic depression which more perfectly describes Ismael.
Nora spends the entire film looking for a father for her child, Elias and Ismael spends the entire film looking for a safe place for himself. One of the most interesting things about this film is that out-of-control Ismael has a big, loving family who surround him with an all-encompassing warm fog of positivism while the controlled, "my father always taught me to control my emotions" Nora really has no one except her son. Nora and Ismael's worlds are opposite of the supposed natural order of things: aren't the well-loved and cared for supposed to be "sane" while the ill nurtured are more often, "crazy?"
Desplechin is dealing with so many things here: mental illness, paternal and maternal love and all its variations, drug addiction, the elements of psychiatric care, male/female relationships and on and on that it took me several viewings to begin to digest and understand all the things with which Desplechin has stuffed his film.
"Kings and Queen" is palpably disturbing on many levels. It is not a comfortable, easily definable film. It's emotions and feelings are sometimes so brutally honest that they physically hurt. But like Nora and Ismael if you survive the ordeal ...you will be better and smarter for it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Awful
Badly acted, badly directed, badly edited, and with the most inappropriate soundtrack I can remember. Read more
Published on 6 Jan 2007 by cinefilo
Mulit-Layered Complex Film with Serious and Funny Moments
Emanuelle Devos plays Nora a successful 35 year old art gallery owner whose current boyfriend/fiance provides her with the queenly lifestyle to which she aspires, however the... Read more
Published on 22 Sep 2006 by Erika Borsos
The Life and Loves of a Selfish Woman
"Kings and Queen" has received widespread critical acclaim, but I found it hard to enjoy the film. Perhaps the subject matter was the reason for this; the film features characters... Read more
Published on 1 May 2006 by L. Davidson
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