The Death of Louis XIV

The sight of the leg­endary French actor Jean-Pierre Leaud puck­er­ing his lips, attempt­ing to pro­duce sali­va in his dried-out gul­let, real­ly is some­thing to behold. He resem­bles a gone-to-seed hound dog attempt­ing to retain the vapours of life force, but per­haps knows that he’s not long for this Earth.

Cocky spaniard Albert Ser­ra returns with the won­der­ful The Death of Louis XIV and, to an almost com­ic degree, it abides by the promise of that morose title. Leaud him­self dons a series of ever-more-out­landish and grav­i­ty defy­ing poo­dle wigs as the ven­er­at­ed ​“Sun King”, wait­ing in his vel­vet-draped cham­bers to be enveloped by the infi­nite. But there is the sug­ges­tion that he is so accept­ing of his sta­tus as a walk­ing god – a sta­tus bol­stered by a sur­round­ing army of fawn­ing dandies – that he some­how believes he’ll tran­scend the fate of man and live on forever.

Despite all the beliefs, rit­u­als and super­sti­tions, the film con­cedes that there is, in the end, noth­ing we can do to stall the inevitable. When the crum­bling meat sack we refer to as our body decides that it’s time to head for the exit sign, then it’s time. This is a human­ist work, look­ing at death as the one thing that aligns us all. The film is hushed and del­i­cate, observ­ing as the king’s valets pon­der the best course of action to ensure his con­tin­ued comfort.

Ser­ra holds the takes to the point of pain. He empha­sis­es the inde­ci­sion and the con­fu­sion, as the king decides to join a meet­ing, is heaved into his wheel­chair, and then heaved straight back into bed. It trans­forms stuffy cos­tume dra­ma into strange sit­u­a­tion­ist com­e­dy while del­i­cate­ly knock­ing an icon of his­to­ry from his vaunt­ed pedestal.

Leaud’s fine­ly nuanced per­for­mance is mirac­u­lous and pos­si­bly one of his most self-reflex­ive (which is say­ing some­thing). And don’t you dare leave the cin­e­ma before the sub­lime clos­ing line, which is as arch­ly cyn­i­cal as it is whol­ly tragic.