English Title: The Death of Louis XIVOriginal Title: La mort de Louis XIVYear: 2016Genre: Drama, History, BiographyCountry: France, Spain, Portugal Language: French, LatinDirector: Albert SerraScreenwriters: Albert Serra, Thierry LounasMusic: Marc VerdaguerCinematography: Jonathan RicquebourgEditors: Albert Serra, Ariadna Ribas, Artur TortCast:Jean-Pierre LéaudPatrick d'AssumçaoMarc SusiniBernard BelinIrène SilvagniJacques HenricVicenç AltaióAlain LajoinieOlivier CadiotJosé WallensteinLluís SerratRating: 6.9/10
Title: Pacifiction Year: 2022Genre: DramaCountry: Spain, France, Germany, Portugal. French PolynesiaLanguage: French, Polynesian, Portuguese, EnglishDirector: Albert SerraScreenwriters: Albert Serra, Baptiste PinteauxMusic: Joe Robinson, Marc VerdaguerCinematography: Artur TortEditors: Albert Serra, Ariadna Ribas, Artur TortCast:Benoît MagimelPahoa MahagafanauMarc SusiniSergi LópezMatahi PambrunAlexandre MeloMontse TriolaCécile GuilbertLluís SerratMike LandscapeMareva WongMichael VautorCyrus AraiRating: 7.4/10
A double-bill from Spanish nonconformist Albert Serra, who apparently takes a shine to Gallic history and culture in both THE DEATH OF LOUIS XIV and PACIFICTION. In the former, Léaud plays a scarcely ambulatory, bed-ridden Louis XIV, body reclining, facial muscles tickling, heavily gasping and wheezing in his final days. It is perhaps his best performance as he strenuously immortalizes the toll and horror of senile moribundity, a conception couldn’t be more removed from his cachet as the erstwhile cover boy of French New Wave. The Sun King's mind remains reasonably sound (his exhortation of his heir about statesmanship is nothing if not apposite), only his frail body has no defense against the infection of gangrene. There is no death rattle to jolt audience out of the narcotizing pace. We are witnessing a slow death, as excruciating as it is incrementally illuminating (the King's belated reconciliation with the Catholic church is deferentially arranged). How to approach one’s mortality is a topic of utter significance. Even for an esteemed and long-reigned sovereign, this piteous and harrowing process cannot be yassified. THE DEATH OF LOUIS XIV is a morbid chamber drama enclosed in a Tenebrist pall with ornate costumes, large wigs and ghastly pallor. The odor of death seems to plumes through every frame. Louis XIV's leg putrefies in the airless room, until it becomes jet black. However, those around him behave with impeccable bedside manners, specifically Guy-Crescent Fagon (d'Assumçao), the King's chief physician, and Blouin (Susini, Serra’s regular), the King's valet. Both are solicitously and meticulously dedicated to their duties. Matching each other stride by stride, they present an empathetic viewpoint on the sidelines, contemplating on and anticipating the inevitable ending with complete obeisance and nuanced affect. It is difficult to pin down Serra's own agenda through the monotonous murkiness and glacially progressing scenarios, but THE DEATH OF LOUIS XIV isn't wanting in offering some"terminal lucidity" as regards the inconvenient truth about the eternal rest and that winded road down the homestretch, meanwhile Serra’s formal nicety (a felicity calls to mind of Manoel de Oliveira) as a filmic belletrist is here to stay. Nothing gets set in the stone in PACIFICTION, a Cannes main competition title. It appeals as an intoxicating slow dance amid tropical loci, under seductive lightings, armed with veiled intentions and inarticulate calculations. Magimel plays De Roller, the High Commissioner of the Republic of France, on the Polynesian island of Tahiti. A solitary but immaculately tactful enigma, De Roller enjoys all the post-Colonial entitlements and prerogatives yet exudes a self-deprecating humility that individuates him as a tolerable protagonist whose well-balanced sophistication has no cracks, not even during a discourteous meeting with the locals about an intending protest against the rumor that France will resume its nuclear testing in the area. De Roller’s diplomatic presence of mind and all-around facility in fielding onerous situations are propitiously coordinated and charismatically portrayed by Magimel, who is accorded with either introspective or philosophical lengthy monologues to dazzle us spectators. De Roller is simultaneously aloof and caring, but his inscrape retains an elusiveness that cannot be penetrated by the goings-on, after 165 minutes, he has remained as opaque as we first meet him. Featuring one of the most astonishingly invigorating wave-riding scenes, where you can vicariously experience the elemental force wash all over you, and a cockfighting spectacle paralleled with a slam-bang ingenious dance battle, PACIFICTION points up Serra’s keen attention and insatiable curiosity about a specific milieu’s cultural and natural heritage. Be that as it may, as a geopolitical thriller, the film is just as cagey as the trans-indigene girl Shannah (an entrancing Mahagafanau) who gains the favor of De Roller yet betrays nothing of her own thoughts. It attempts to extract something topical and urgent from the islanders’ unique biosphere, by mystifying it with a beguiling sleight of hand, as De Roller maunders amid the intricacies of a potent threat where distrust, mistrust and indecency also roam under Serra’s particularly pleasurable conjurations. At the end of the day, while the coda bears down on the direction of doomsday lunacy, with the Admiral (Susini) and co. going gung-ho like nobody’s business, PACIFICTION is more likely to trigger your wanderlust and mesmerize you with its sublime splendor and tranquil vibes. An oneiric jaunt with no clear demarcation, Serra’s cinema testifies to be quite a different reactor of sensorial stimulation. referential entries: Pere Vilà i Barceló’s LAPIDATION OF SAINT ETIENNE (2012, 4.2/10); Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg’s KON-TIKI (2012, 6.9/10); Alan Rickman’s A LITTLE CHAOS (2014, 6.5/10); Tran Anh Hung’s THE TASTE OF THINGS (2023, 7.6/10); Manoel de Oliveira’s THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA (2010, 6.2/10).
