Kings and Queen
Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Year Released: 2004
Rating: 1.5
Desplechin takes two stories with two different moods (one of frenetic lunacy, the other of melancholy) and mashes them together in this not-so-successful attempt at cross-genre filmmaking. The two main characters - a musician given to psychotic lapses and a woman who's caring for her dying father (and grieving and grieving and grieving) - aren't inherently compelling figures (both are overbaked dramatically and cinematically, with Desplechin consumed with love for the jump cut), and the link between the two of them, made clear in the third act, failed to bowl me over. I hate referring to things as being "boring," because I learned as a Freshman in my Honors English class that the term is reveals a shallow intellect (guilty as charged, I'm afraid), but like Desplechin's equally masturbatory My Sex Life..., there is really no more fitting an adjective I can find.
