Completed - FRENCH - Historical, Drama - 115 minutes
Year of production : 2016 Director(s) : Serra ALBERT Writer(s) : Thierry LOUNAS, Albert SERRA Cast : Jean Pierre LÉAUD, Patrick D'ASSUMÇAO, Irène SILVAGNI, Bernard BELIN, Marc SUSINI Producer(s) : Thierry LOUNAS, Joaquim SAPINHO, Claire BONNEFOY, Montse TRIOLA
The King is dead, long live Jean-Pierre Léaud! Following screenings at Cannes of The Last Days of Louis XIV, critics wrote that this was the role of a lifetime for one of the iconic actors of the French New Wave, who received a lifetime achievement award in Cannes. His face, which matured right along with each subsequent film by Truffaut, Godard, Eustache, Tsai, becomes motionless in Serra's film, fading and dying in a purple-and-gold fabric, wrapped in an absurd sheepskin wig. Serra shuns naturalism, focusing instead on the contrast between the immobilization of the patient and his inescapably progressive disease, between the body that is starting to decompose and attempts to maintain some semblance of regal taste during the ritual. He creates scenes inspired by 17th-century painting, filled with whispering servants and warm candlelight. The screenplay, based on medical reports and the memoirs of Saint-Simon, deals with the last days of the Sun King, dying of gangrene in the presence of helpless doctors. As usual with Serra, one of the leading neo-modernists in European cinema, the historical context is just a pretext for telling a story, in the spirit of Bresson's "pure cinema," about universal aspects of human life.
Country(ies) : FRANCE, SPAIN, PORTUGAL
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Cannes 2016Jerusalem FF 2016 (Best International Feature)T-Mobile New Horizons 2016 (Panorama of World Cinema)Prix Jean Vigo 2016