La muerte de Louis XIV, Albert Serra, France-Portugal-Spain, 2016, 115', OV with Spanish subtitles (January 7), OV with Basque subtitles (January 27)
A film by Albert Serra is always an event for the world of film. His latest work is set in 1715, in the month of August. After returning from a walk, Louis XIV feels a strong pain in the leg. During the following days, the King continues with his obligations, but he finds it hard to sleep and a fever is consuming him. Apathetic and weak, his health progressively deteriorates. It is the start of the slow and painful agony of the most important monarch in the history of France.
The new film by Albert Serra, one of Europe's great contemporary directors, takes place entirely in the King's bedroom. Based on the memoirs of Saint-Simon and of the Marquee of Dangeau, who described this agony in detail, Serra offers a regal portrait embodied in the figure of the great Jean-Pierre Léaud. Serra explains: “The subject and the period of the film are those two weeks of confinement, during which Louis XIV watches courtesans, priests and ministers file past his deathbed. But it is not at all about showing how France lives, during that fortnight, the loss of its King, but rather the film is the story of a man who prepares to die, in suffering and in private, despite his condition of monarch."
Presented in the official section of the Cannes Festival and recipient of the Jean Vigo Award.
The new film by Albert Serra, one of Europe's great contemporary directors, takes place entirely in the King's bedroom. Based on the memoirs of Saint-Simon and of the Marquee of Dangeau, who described this agony in detail, Serra offers a regal portrait embodied in the figure of the great Jean-Pierre Léaud.