150 Word Review: 'The Death of Louis XIV' (2016)
Excuse my French
The king is slowly dying, and it takes forever in Albert Serra’s gloomy early-18th-century chamber drama, The Death of Louis XIV. I want to resist calling this “body horror,” but it’s very much about slow-motion decomposition.
The Sun King, the longest-serving monarch in European history, is reduced to just another mortal surrounded by doctors, valets, and courtiers who have no idea how to save his life or ease his pain. Sacrebleu, his leg is rotting!
Louis is played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, best known as Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and four later films. Léaud barely moves for almost two hours, yet his performance is quietly devastating. Louis XIV’s agony is both regal and pathetic. For nearly the entire film, the camera—and the audience—stare at “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,” Shakespeare making death sound noble when it is, in fact, undignified and darkly comic.