The Death of Louis XIV

August 1715. After going for a walk, Louis XIV feels a pain in his leg. The next days, the king keeps fulfilling his duties and obligations, but his sleep is troubled and he has a serious fever. He barely eats and weakens increasingly. This is the start of the slow agony of the greatest King of France from gangrene, surrounded by his doctors and closest advisors, speaking in frantic, whispered tones about their options, in an era in which little is known of such illnesses.

Albert Serra's new film, The Death of Louis XIV, is an adaptation of the Duc de Saint-Simon’s memoirs, starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as the Sun-King. The cult actor, who worked with all major directors from the Nouvelle Vague after being discovered in Truffaut's The 400 Blows, plays the dying king who can barely move from his bed in the Château de Versailles. His relatives and his closest counsellors come in turns at his bedside, but he attends only a few meetings and can barely rule his kingdom. His secret wife Madame de Maintenon, and his doctor Fagon dread his last breath and try to hide it from the public, to preserve the future of France. Shot in rich colour with extraordinary lighting, Jean-Pierre Léaud, in his costume, hair and poses, fully embodies the last few days of the longest serving king of France, who, with his seventy two years in power, changed the face of the monarchy and of France.

Cannes Film Festival, Official Selection, Special Screening

Best Film, International Competition, Jerusalem Film Festival

London Film Festival 2016, 'Dare'

Week Commencing 11 Aug 2017 (Also available on Curzon Home Cinema)

Week Commencing 18 Aug 2017 (Also available on Curzon Home Cinema)

Week Commencing 25th August 2017 (Also available on Curzon Home Cinema)

Week Commencing 1st September 2017 (Also available on Curzon Home Cinema)

Born in Banyoles in 1975, Albert Serra is a Catalan artist and director. Having studied philosophy and literature, he wrote plays and produced different video works. He gained an international recognition with his first feature film, Honor de Cavalleria (2006), a free adaptation of Don Quijote played by non-professional actors from his village. For his second film, Birdsong (Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight 2008), Serra took inspiration in a traditional Catalan Christmas song, El cant dels ocells, and worked with the same group of people to tell the story of the Three Wise Men who golled their guiding star to Jesus. In 2013, the Centre Pompidou in Paris organized a full retrospective and gave him a carte blanche. The same year, he received the Golden Leopard in Locarno for his film Story of my Death, inspired by Casanova’s memoirs. In 2015 he was invited to show work at the Venice Biennale, in the Catalan Pavillion, and he also had a full retrospective of his films at Tate Modern.

The Death of Louis XIV, his new film starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as the Sun King, was presented in the Official Selection of Cannes Film Festival 2016 to warm critical and public applause.

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Feature-length films

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'The most remarkable sight here is the Sun King, Louis XIV himself, played in an extraordinary performance by the French film legend Jean-Pierre Léaud.'

Justin Chang, The Los Angeles Times

'Six decades after he broke out with The 400 Blows, Cannes’ favourite son Jean-Pierre Léaud plays out the dying of the Sun King in a stately, majestic study of flesh and emblems from Catalonia’s Albert Serra: surely the most beautiful film at Cannes 2016.'

Jonathan Romney, Sight and Sound

'The film simply looks stunning... Serra here opts for a painterly approach that combines a certain realism (if also an enormous opulence) in costumes, wigs and furniture with a rich, painterly look full of flickering candles and enveloping shadows. The light is literally dying in Jonathan Ricquebourg’s richly textured cinematography, while Sebastian Vogler’s production design is an impressively coordinated assembly of red and gold velvets, silks and brocades that, despite being no-doubt the most luxurious in the kingdom, do nothing to alleviate the ruler’s pain. The extravagant wigs, which flank Louis’s increasingly hollow features, are similarly overflowing in an unnatural way that contrasts with the banality and nakedness of the person slowly dying underneath them.'

Boyd van Hoeij,The Hollywood Reporter

'As darkly funny as it is moving…Léaud delivers a remarkable performance that concerns matters both grimly physical and dauntingly abstract. We see a body in decay but also sense the depletion of power, the evacuation of life. The Death of Louis XIV, winner of this year’s Prix Jean Vigo, is Serra’s most classical film as well as the clearest expression of his career project.'

Dennis Lim, Film Comment

'Catalan director Albert Serra’s film has a documentary-like authenticity, matching the unblinking instincts of a modern reality
television series with the visual allure of the old masters..., Serra has also found his perfect Louis in Jean-Pierre Leaud... Leaud plays with a weary indomitability, determined to carry on, gracious and dignified in his terrible suffering... It is easily the actor’s best role and most noteworthy performance in some time.'

Allan Hunter, Screen International

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