The Death of Louis XIV

Albert Serra

The great Jean-Pierre Léaud delivers a majestic performance as the longest-reigning French king during his final days. Filled with ravishing candlelit images and painstaking details from historical texts, Serra’s elegant, engrossing contemplation on death and its representation is as darkly funny as it is moving.

DIRECTOR
Albert Serra
YEAR
2016
COUNTRY
France / Portugal / Spain
RUNTIME
115 minutes
START DATE
March 31, 2017

The great Jean-Pierre Léaud, synonymous with French cinema for over half a century, delivers a majestic, career-capping performance as the longest-reigning French monarch during his final days. Albert Serra’s elegant, engrossing contemplation on death and its representation finds the extravagantly wigged Sun King slowly wasting away from gangrene in his bedchamber, surrounded by devoted servants, pets and a retinue of hopeless doctors. Filled with ravishing candlelit images and painstaking details gleaned from Saint-Simon’s memoirs and other historical texts, Louis XIV is as darkly funny as it is moving, revealing the absurdity of the rule-bound royal court, but even more so of death itself. A Cinema Guild release.

The film simply looks stunning.
Boyd van Hoeij, The Hollywood Reporter
Continually engrossing.
Ben Kenigsberg, Variety
The Death of Louis XIV
The Death of Louis XIV
The Death of Louis XIV
The Death of Louis XIV

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