Critic Reviews
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Kate Taylor, Globe and Mail
Desplechin's big, bold, iconoclastic feature Rois et Reine is a disconcerting film that can turn your head at the oddest moments.
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Susan Walker, Toronto Star
Funny, absurd, often mocking itself and always quoting cultural history.
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Bob Longino, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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.
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Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times
There's a looseness to the camera work and storytelling that's appealingly breezy: This film feels, for better or worse, like real life.
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Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer
Kings and Queen, full of passion and humor, madness and grief, is close to a masterpiece.
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James Berardinelli, ReelViews
Kings and Queen is at times compelling, at times devastating, and at times long-winded.
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Jay Antani, Cinema Writer
A highly unstable compound of melodrama and offbeat comedy that elicits more shrugs of confusion than sighs of satisfaction
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Anton Bitel, Eye for Film
a complex, character-driven film that never allows its themes - madness, love, coming of age - to become reducible to pat formulae, or over-sentimentalisation.
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Erica Abeel, Film Journal International
Its novelistic breadth, pitched intensity and on-the-fly shooting style pull the viewer smack-dab into the middle of these lives.
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Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid
I can't quite get my head around it; Ismael is too cartoony and Nora is too icy.
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MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher
[M]ixes with aplomb equal measures of intellectual screwball comedy and dark metaphysical tragedy, though part of the joke may be that one often can't tell which is which...
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Chris Cabin, Filmcritic.com
the film proves, at the very least, that Desplechin is a director that garners due attention
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Michele Kenner, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
This is a first-rate melo-dramedy under the influence of director Arnaud Desplechin.
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Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central
Great filmmaking and, as does not always follow, a great film.
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Shawn Levy, Oregonian
It is well-acted and written with a rigorous effort to skirt cliche, and it has the savor of real life throughout.
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John Beifuss, Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Heroic and absurdist...
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Sean Axmaker, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
His scenes ripple with undercurrents of awkward emotions... creating a film both devastating and uplifting, but he passes no judgments.
Read all 17 critic reviews
Featured Audience Ratings
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With Rois et Reine, Arnaud Desplechin has created utterly insane work of art. This is a film which is mad itself.
Desplechin's strength lies in his fantastic ability to travel from drama to comedy and from there to chaos, suspense and even real life horrors. Rois et Reine… More
With Rois et Reine, Arnaud Desplechin has created utterly insane work of art. This is a film which is mad itself.
Desplechin's strength lies in his fantastic ability to travel from drama to comedy and from there to chaos, suspense and even real life horrors. Rois et Reine represent one of those films that goes into directions that you will never guess beforehand. Like Christian Petzold's Gespenster or David Lynch's Inland Empire, this is a film that is all about the journey, not the resolution which lies in the end.
There is no doubt of the fact that the film's jazzy structure and editing is too much for some viewers, but patient ones will be rewarded with one of the most fascinating French films in recent memory. Arnaud Desplechin has taken huge risks with this film and the result is one majestic success in a film art. Rois et Reine is a film that is constantly alive. It's like some strange object from another planet. Constantly mutating and changing it's course, it truly is a magnificent shapeshifter for a film. Still with all it's mood changings and sudden bursts of emotions, this is hauntingly beautiful and sad film at it's core. Beneath all the madness and grief there lies a deeply touching story.
For me this film was like a lightning from the sky. Once it started, it refused to let me go and took me into a journey that i am lucky to take again and again in the future. Rois et Reine is a rare beast. If you want to see something you've never seen before, then this is your cup of tea.
Arnaud Desplechin is not interested in making traditional films. He is an artist who is willing to push the boundaries and break the conventions of cinema. Rois et Reine is a cyclone unleashed. If you love films and filmmaking, then you need to see this film.
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[font=Century Gothic]"Kings and Queen" starts out with Nora(Emmanuelle Devos) introducing herself directly to the camera. She is 35, runs an art gallery and has a ten year old son, Elias, by her first husband. The first husband died while she was pregnant. Her second… More
[font=Century Gothic]"Kings and Queen" starts out with Nora(Emmanuelle Devos) introducing herself directly to the camera. She is 35, runs an art gallery and has a ten year old son, Elias, by her first husband. The first husband died while she was pregnant. Her second husband, Ismael(Mathieu Amalric), wants to be dead, too, at least judging by the noose hanging over the chair in his apartment when the men in white coats come for him.(And I would like to say I was disappointed that they weren't carrying butterfly nets...Luckily for him, his psychiatriast is played by Catherine Deneuve.) Nora is about to marry husband number three in a couple of weeks. The latest model is unlike the first two - totally rich, responsible and quite boring. On a visit to Grenoble to visit her father and son, Nora learns that her father is dying and has very little time left. [/font]
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]"Kings and Queen" is an intelligent, thoughtful movie about growing older, learning responsbility towards taking care of others and what family means. It also makes a point about how we all have an affect on everybody around us, even if we don't realize it. The performances by both Devos and Amalric are superb. [/font]
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Pretty interesting return to the screen for Catherine Deneuve in an ensemble piece directed by Arnaud Desplechin. Not familiar with Desplechin's work in the past but this is a good introduction.
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One of the many joys and sadnesses of this necessarily long film are the way in which characters motivations and true feelings are gradually revealed as the film progresses, so that what starts out as a relatively straightforward drama becomes more complex, emotive and absorbing. Two… More
One of the many joys and sadnesses of this necessarily long film are the way in which characters motivations and true feelings are gradually revealed as the film progresses, so that what starts out as a relatively straightforward drama becomes more complex, emotive and absorbing. Two skilled lead performances and two very different, flawed characters (but who basically both want escape) are at the centre of this compelling, funny, moving and truthful piece of cinema.
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An interesting film to be sure, and definitely worth a watch. Mathieu Amalric delivers a winning performance that shines above all else. This french melodrama again shines the dark and hidden side of a slice of life; what appears normal isnt and what appears happy and full may be in… More
An interesting film to be sure, and definitely worth a watch. Mathieu Amalric delivers a winning performance that shines above all else. This french melodrama again shines the dark and hidden side of a slice of life; what appears normal isnt and what appears happy and full may be in fact empty and sad. No real winners or losers at film's end except the viewer who will appreciate this rather rich story that has alot of depth and truth.
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