A Funkaoshi Production

Kings and Queens

   28 February 2008, early morning

I watched the French film Kings and Queens last night. I watched the first hour or so with Shima: she couldn’t stand the film and stopped watching about half way through. Kings and Queens is a serious-ass art-house film. I enjoyed it, but if you don’t enjoy slow, disjoint, meandering movies I recommend you stay away. The movie is a little hard to describe, with basically two loosely intertwined stories. The movie begins with a woman telling the audience that she is to be married for the third time: her first husband died (before their son was born), her second husband and her weren’t compatible, and her husband to be is a wealthy kind man who she loves very much. As the movie moves forward, you realize that her description of things isn’t quite accurate. The other story involves a man, Ismaël, who has just been checked into a sanatorium, but is certain there is a misunderstanding. The movie is full of flashbacks. These flashbacks usually fill in the details of an event mentioned by the characters in the present: more often than not these flashbacks contradict what the audience has been led to believe up to that point. Kings and Queens is an interesting movie. It’s definitely a movie you need to watch twice I think to really appreciate. The movie stars the lovely Emmanuelle Devos, who was in Gentile. The more I think about the film, the more I like it: this is usually the sign of a good film.

Kings and Queens on Rotten Tomatoes.

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