''Kings and Queen'' (french: Rois et reine) is a 2004 French drama film directed by

Arnaud Desplechin Arnaud Desplechin (; born 31 October 1960) is a French film director and screenwriter. In 2016, he won the César Award for Best Director for ''My Golden Days'' (2015). Life and career Desplechin was born in Roubaix. He is the son of Robert and ...

, starring

Emmanuelle Devos Emmanuelle Devos (born 10 May 1964) is a French actress. She is the daughter of actress Marie Henriau. She won the César Award for Best Actress in 2002 for her performance in ''Sur mes lèvres'', directed by Jacques Audiard. She has also bee ...

and

Mathieu Amalric Mathieu Amalric (; born 25 October 1965) is a French actor and filmmaker. He is best known internationally for his roles in the James Bond film '' Quantum of Solace'', in which he played the lead villain, Steven Spielberg's ''Munich'', Wes An ...

. The film had its world premiere in the Competition section at the

61st Venice International Film Festival The 61st annual Venice International Film Festival was held between 1 and 11 September 2004. The festival opened with Steven Spielberg's ''The Terminal'', and closed with Katsuhiro Otomo's '' Steamboy''. The Golden Lion was awarded to the fi ...

on 3 September 2004. It was released in France on 22 December 2004.

Plot

Nora Cotterelle, a woman in her 30s is caring for her ill father, Louis Jenssens. While Nora tries to present a facade that all is well with her life, she is twice divorced and has a son, Elias, whose father is dead. Elias has behavior problems caused by autism. Nora's present relationship is not going well, and she is soon to marry a businessman, while Elias is becoming increasingly withdrawn. A parallel storyline follows her former lover and second husband, Ismaël Vuillard, a musician, with whom she had lived for seven years. He is given to strange behaviour, and as a result he has been committed to a mental hospital, from which he is planning to escape. Nora learns that her father's digestive problems are actually cancer, and facing her father's death, Nora desperately seeks out Ismaël to ask that he reconnect with Elias, but he has mixed feelings about adopting her son. Moreover, he has met Arielle, another patient.

Cast

Release

The film had its world premiere in the Competition section at the

on 3 September 2004. It was released in France on 22 December 2004.

Reception

Critical response

On review aggregator website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 86% based on 57 reviews, and an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "A dryly comic, stylistically brave film." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 84 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Peter Bradshaw of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "rich, complex and deeply pleasing". Erica Abeel of ''

Film Journal International ''Film Journal International'' was a motion-picture industry trade magazine published by the American company Prometheus Global Media. It was a sister publication of ''Adweek'', ''Billboard'', ''The Hollywood Reporter'', and other periodicals. H ...

'' wrote: "Its novelistic breadth, pitched intensity and on-the-fly shooting style pull the viewer smack-dab into the middle of these lives."

Accolades

References

External links

* * {{Arnaud Desplechin 2004 films French drama films Louis Delluc Prize winners Films directed by Arnaud Desplechin Films with screenplays by Arnaud Desplechin Films featuring a Best Actor César Award-winning performance Films featuring a Best Actor Lumières Award-winning performance Films featuring a Best Actress Lumières Award-winning performance 2000s French films