La Mort de Louis XIV / The Death of Louis XIV
Thursday, March 29, 5:00pm, UNC Charlotte main campus, McKnight Hall, Cone Center,
Albert Serra, France, Portugal, Spain, 2016 / 115 min.
French with English subtitles
Presented as part of The Tournées Festival, made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S., the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), the French American Cultural Fund, Florence Gould Foundation and Highbrow Entertainment.
Additional sponsors are the Alliance Française de Charlotte and the UNC Charlotte French Club.
Introduction by Allison Stedman, Associate Professor of French, UNC Charlotte. Discussion will follow screening.
After rising to the top of the festival circuit with astonishing retellings of Don
Quixote, the Nativity, and the life of Casanova, the unpredictable Catalan
auteur Albert Serra takes on two icons at once: the Sun King and the celebrated French actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. By offering the role of Louis XIV to the man who played Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows and its sequels, as well as starring in epochal modernist films by Godard and Pasolini, Serra has given film lovers the opportunity to once more marvel at the unmatched talent of a performer whose every gesture and intonation seems a work of poetry. Playing Louis XIV in the last days of his life, surrounded by his obsequious courtiers and—in one hilarious scene—his beloved greyhounds, Léaud reaches new heights, using his aura as a legend of cinema to cast the long shadow of a fading Sun King. Serra’s trademark philosophical wit is put to good use in this warts-and-all depiction of the frailty of a feared monarch, as is his marvelous command of chiaroscuro lighting. Inspired by the memoirs of the duc de Saint-Simon, The Death of Louis XIV feels as rigorously accurate as it is profoundly imaginative.
