Ten films of 2000-2008 King And Queens
Arnaud Desplechin is born the 31st of October 1960 in Roubaix. Desplechin studied film directing at the university of Paris III Sorbonne, graduating in 1984. Then he become a student at La Femis ( a famous cinema school in Paris). During the 1980’s he become the director of photography for several movies. In 1990 he shot La Vie Des Morts starring several actors who would appear in most Desplechin films (Emmanuelle Devos). The film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1992 La Sentinelle become his first well known movie with Matthieu Amalric and Chiara Mastroianni. With How I Got Into An Argument he was established as an important director of the 1990’s. In 2000 he made his first movie in english: Esther Kahn with Summer Pheonix (the sister of Jaoquin). In 2008 he filmed a family drama Un Conte de Noël starring Catherine Deneuve, Matthieu Amalric and Chiara Mastroianni.
In Paris, the thirty-five year old Nora Cotterelle has been the director of a famous art gallery for six months and will marry the wealthy owner Jean-Jacques within the next weeks. When she travels to Grenoble to meet her son Elias that is spending vacation with her father, the professor and writer Louis Jenssens, she discovers that Louis has a terminal cancer, and she decides to stay in Grenoble to nurse her father. Nora recalls her relationship with Elias' father Pierre and with her viola player lover Ismaël Vuillard, who raised Elias for seven years and for whom her son has a great affection. Ismaël is interned in a psychiatric hospital against his will. Faced with her father's death, Nora seeks out Ismaël to ask that he reconnect with Elias; a great deal else roils from her past. Ismaël has his own challenges, not the least of which are his feelings toward adopting Elias and his meeting Arielle, another patient.
The movie is full of cultural references: literature, mythology, art, music and film. Desplechin mixed perfectly tragedy and comedy in a very deep reflection about life. The director always plays with irony and cruetly of the characters.The acting brilliantly matches the unexpected revelations that flash back to let us know how each character got to be this person and the transformations to where they are going.
