MY KING
| 2016 – 125′ – Drama / Romance –
Written and Directed by Maïwenn.
Starring Vincent Cassel, Emmanuelle Bercot, Louis Garrel, Isild Le Besco.
Official Selection COLCOA 2016 – Official Competition Cannes International Film Festival (Winner Best Actress for Emmanuelle Bercot).
In French with English subtitles.
A Film Movement release.|
This intimate take on a rollercoaster relationship puts all the tropes of romance on its head by looking at it through the eyes of a woman seduced by the male equivalent of a blonde bombshell. Licking her wounds in a convalescent center after an accident-on-purpose on the ski slopes, fortyish lawyer Tony looks back on a tumultuous decade with her dream guy, Georgio. An effortlessly charming restaurateur, Georgio views the world as a stage upon which he is performing his life. Tony obliges with five-star reviews, at least while the passions are in full flush. Only later, when the couple gets down to the business of building a life together, will Georgio’s wolfish ego and his inability to fully let go of his womanizing past, begin to tarnish the shine. But even if theirs is a doomed relationship, Tony is about to learn that it doesn’t always have to be this way. Vincent Cassel is at his raffish best, and Emmanuelle Bercot won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for her heartbreaking portrayal of a woman desperate to fall out of love.
With MY KING, her fourth feature film, it’s perhaps time to stop calling Maïwenn an actress-turned-filmmaker and start calling her simply a filmmaker. Coming off her grittier Cannes Jury Prize-winning ensemble drama POLISSE(COLCOA 2011), Maïwenn has put her spin on the classic French romance, and was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.