
The Death of Louis XIV
(La mort de Louis XIV)
Directed by Albert Serra.
With Jean-Pierre Léaud, Patrick d’Assumçao, Marc Susini.
France/Portugal/Spain, 2016, DCP, color, 105 min.
French and Latin with English subtitles.
DCP source: Cinema Guild
With Jean-Pierre Léaud, Patrick d’Assumçao, Marc Susini.
France/Portugal/Spain, 2016, DCP, color, 105 min.
French and Latin with English subtitles.
DCP source: Cinema Guild
In a brilliant turn of casting Serra allowed Jean-Pierre Léaud to become the Sun King in the sad days of his slow, crepuscular death and to bring elements of tragicomedy to the attentive but futile rituals of the doctors, servants and sycophants fluttering around the monarch. While embodying the king who symbolically marked both the apogee and end of France as the leading European power, the charged presence of nouvelle vague legend Léaud as the dying ruler should also be taken as a retort of sorts to the tiresomely repeated mantra about the so-called “death of cinema.”