Rois & reine. Dir. Arnaud Desplechin (2004)
Nathalie CROUAU
Allusion (implicit)
1. Film data
- Arnaud Desplechin
- Emmanuelle Devos (Nora), Mathieu Amalric (Ismaël), Catherine Deneuve (Mlle Vasset), Maurice Garrel (Louis Jenssens), Nathalie Boutefeu (Chloé Jenssens), Jean-Paul Roussillon (Abel Vuillard), Magali Woch (Arielle, the Chinese girl), Hippolyte Girardot (Counsellor Mamanne), Noémie Lvovsky (Elizabeth), Elsa Wolliaston (Doctor Devereux), Geoffrey Carey (Claude), Olivier Rabourdin (Jean-Jacques), Valentin Lelong (Elias), Gilles Cohen (Simon), Catherine Rouvel (Monique Vuillard), Joachim Salinger (Pierre Cotterelle), François Toumarkine (Prospéro), Miglen Mirtchev (Caliban), Shulamit Adar (Mme Seyvos), Marc Betton (Léoppold Virag)
- Arnaud Desplechin, Roger Bohbot
- Eric Gautier
- Laurence Briaud
- Grégoire Hetzel
- Dan Bevan
- Nathalie Raoul
- Pascal Caucheteux
- Why Not Productions, France 2 Cinéma, Rhône-Alpes Cinéma, Canal+, Cinécinéma
- 157 min.
- France
- 2004
- French
- BAC Vidéo, 2005
- DVD
English Synopsis
Nora Cotterelle (Emmanuelle Devos) is struggling to care for her father (Maurice Garrel), who suffers from digestive ailments. Though she keeps up appearances, her personal life is a shambles: she is twice-divorced, the father of her son is dead, and though she is engaged to a businessman (Olivier Rabourdin), her relationship with him is rocky. Moreover, her son Elias (Valentin Lelong) is autistic, and the stressors in his mother’s life exacerbate his behavioural problems and cause him to become increasingly withdrawn. Ismaël Vuillard (Mathieu Amalric) is Nora’s second husband. He is something of an eccentric, and as a result, he is wrongfully committed to a psychiatric institution, where he meets an intriguing patient called Arielle (Magali Woch). When Nora learns that her father’s stomach issues are really caused by terminal cancer, she approaches Ismaël and asks him to adopt her son. He is unsure if he is willing to become a father figure to Elias: after all, there is still the matter of escaping from the psychiatric ward…