La Femme Recommends...Kings and Queen

One day, in a La Femme Recommends, I promise that I will review a fun, breezy, modern film with broad appeal (K is appealing for The A-Team.  Never.).  That is not the movie I am recommending today.  Instead, I am going to try and convince you, dear reader, to see Kings and Queen, a three hour, sprawling French film that includes, in no particular order: comedy, tragedy, melodrama, gunfire, murder, lost love, French hip hop, "Moon River", and one hell of a femme fatale.

Nora (Emanuelle Devos), our heroine / villain / femme fatale / Botticelli goddess lives a charmed life.  She is engaged for the to a rich, gangster-like businessman who she seems mildly interested in. She also runs a successful gallery, which she is also mildly interested in.  She has been married twice before: her first husband is dead, and we will get into the second one in depth later.  She also has a ten year old son from her first marriage, Elias, who she also seems mildly interested in (sense a theme?)  and who she rarely sees, apparently without much guilt.  Of all the men in Nora's life, the only one she seems to truly love is her father, Louis, a famous writer.   Unfortunately, he has been diagnosed with stomach cancer and is dying a terrible and painful death.  While Nora takes care of her father, we get more insight into the four men she has loved (her father, her first husband, her son, and finally her second husband, Ismael.  Notice, her new fiance is not on this list).

There is a remoteness to Nora that can be off putting; she can be a bit cold and maybe even conniving (see, e.g., her new relationship in which her love can now be bought), but there is also incredible warmth in Devos's performance.  I have sung her praises before but this is my favorite performance of her career.  Nora is an incredibly complex character: the more we learn about her, the less we like her but, at the same time, the more we sympathize with her.  There is something strange and beautiful about Devos that Desplechin brings out perfectly.  She is not a traditional beauty, but in this film she is radiant, an object of worship and scorn.  A late act revelation about how a character truly feels about her is at once devastating and also a little gratifying.  But the revelation strikes her so hard, we, like the men in the film, want to make her forget about it.

While Nora is ensconced in tragedy, Husband #2, Ismael is living a burlesque comedy.  Ismael, a violist, has been committed to a mental hospital by an unknown "friend" after his eccentric behavior begins to drive them mad.  As he schemes with his lawyer, a drug addict, to get out, he also begins a tentative relationship with a fellow patient. Ismael is played by my favorite French actor, Mathieu Amalric, and he is wonderfully unhinged (and strangely handsome.  Amalric is the epitome of unconventionally handsome).  In the course of the film, Ismael will (1) wear a cape, (2) break dance and, (3) tell Catherine Deneuve that women have no souls. Amalric could easily have given just a broad comic performance, and while there are elements of that (Hello, he break dances! See the video above.  You're welcome.), Amalric and Desplechin, makes Ismael just as complex and as true as Nora.  Ismael is a huge a&#hole, but he is one of those detestable, yet irresistible ones (you know what I mean). He is also thoughtful, intelligent and in his last scene, incredibly romantic.

As Nora and Ismael weave in and out of each other's lives, the stories collide. But, this is not a movie where the stories directly relate.  Desplechin has an incredibly deft hand at filmmaking; huge tonal shifts work remarkably well here and he also has a great flair with editing.  Jump cuts, sepia tones, archival footage and even a stage like set for one scene all work together to disconcert but engage the viewer. Desplechin also offers a tapestry of minor characters (although they are so perfectly drawn they shouldn't be called minor at all.) In addition to Hippolyte Girardot as the madcap lawyer, there is Catherine Denevue as the hospital director and Jean-Paul Roussillon and Maurice Garrel (grandfather of my famed french boyfriend, Louis a.k.a Monsieur Dirty Hot) as our heroes' respective fathers.

Despleschin was inspired by Francois Truffaut's declaration that he wanted to have four ideas in every scene.  Despleschin succeeds beautifully and frustratingly with Kings and Queen.  This is the kind of movie that you never really understand fully but appreciate more each time you watch it.  There is something so close to reality about the characters of Nora and Ismael that we love and hate them but also empathize with them in an almost uncomfortable way.  As we follow them on the road to forgiveness and acceptance, we root for them and scold them in a way that I have never felt for any other film characters (except for perhaps my beloved Jesse and Celine from the Before Sunset / Sunrise films).  Kings and Queen is absolutely a masterpiece.  Difficult, beautiful, rewarding, heart breaking and heart swelling, just like all of our lives.

Julie