MIFF NOTES: The Death of Louis XIV (2016, Dir. Albert Serra)

The Death of Louis XIV provides an arduous two hours watching France’s King Louis XIV die, slowly, for two hours, in a room, with the blinds drawn, and a leg rotting. It is as stuffy and as smelly and as monotonous and as frustrating as you’d expect spending two hours watching France’s King Louis XIV die, slowly, would have been.

Points to Albert Serra for doing exactly what he set out to do though. And doing it with total commitment to the period. And for getting France’s child of cinema, Jean-Pierre Léaud, to pull out a remarkable performance, which will undoubtedly come to be considered a cap to his life lived on film.

The Death of Louis XIV isn’t a pleasant watch. Nor is it a particularly entertaining one (beyond a couple of grim laughs) but it is a superb expression of the levelling power of death. Everybody dies. Even Sun Kings. It’s never pretty.

Nailed it.

★★★

Trailer:

The Death of Louis XIV screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.