Two visions of heartbreak haunt Mon Roi — or, more accurately, the film’s troubled protagonist. Though lawyer Tony (Emmanuelle Bercot, Turning Tide) experiences the heady rush of fast and furious love when she meets smooth-talking restaurateur Georgio (Vincent Cassel, Partisan) at a Parisian nightclub, a sometimes defeated, sometimes defiant look proves her more prominent and recurrent expression. The former springs from pain and disappointment as the pair’s romance swiftly proves rocky; the latter from acceptance, however reluctant, that their dreams of living happily ever after will remain just that. Indeed, if ever a fictional character was trapped between the lure of her heart and the logic of her mind, it’s the lead in French actress turned filmmaker Maïwenn’s fourth feature.
Mon Roi starts its marital torment at the end, with Tony injured in a skiing accident, installed in a rehabilitation centre to mend her badly broken leg, and asked by her therapist whether the incident could’ve been something more than a mishap. Cue her lengthy reflections on her tumultuous ten years with Georgio — their frantic courtship and joyful wedding, as well as the cracks of truth that fractured their nuptial bliss from her pregnancy onwards — as played out in flashbacks, and punctuated by Tony’s modern-day progress getting her limb and life back together.
Of course, couplings running their course, mirrored physical and emotional devastation, and figures forced to look back in order to move forward all make for common filmic fodder; however, here, hope resides in the details. Again, Tony is the key — or her portrayal by 2015 Cannes Film Festival best actress co-winner Bercot, specifically. The tried, tested and often tired storyline scripted by Maïwenn and The Price of Fame‘s Etienne Comar may never escape its well-worn status despite the actress’ concerted efforts, but it does benefit from the injection of greater depth, texture and intimacy, and from the apt inhabiting of its female-centric viewpoint. Reuniting with her Polisse director, fellow helmer turned thespian Bercot wears the competing vulnerability and vivacity of her character, through good times and bad, as a second skin.
It’s a realistic and raw central portrayal, and one to hang a movie off of, though that feat doesn’t come to fruition as it should. In fact, the battle of trying to salvage a trying situation versus choosing a better future isn’t the only clash at Mon Roi‘s core, nor is the usually fiery confrontation between its conflict-ridden lovers. While Bercot and her lively, overtly performative co-star Cassel typify the feature at its partially improvised and spontaneous best — with Louis Garrel (In the Shadow of Women), playing Tony’s pleading, disapproving brother, particularly noteworthy among the supporting the cast — they can never quite escape the maudlin, rather than moving, strains of the purposefully heartstring-pulling material.
Maïwenn endeavours to wrap up her melodrama in aesthetic glossiness to compensate, which provides a postcard-like portrait of a crumbling couple across the movie’s imagery, but still lessens the desired resonance. There’s symmetry in her visual choices with cinematographer Claire Mathon (The Last Hammer Blow) and editor Simon Jacquet (Wild Life), as seen blatantly in mirrored frames across the intertwined time periods, and perhaps less intentionally in a polished exterior hiding rougher contents. And while a statement could be made about film charting a dissatisfying bond proving less than fulfilling itself, Mon Roi‘s struggles aren’t by design. In an effort determined to capture the vivid complexities of love’s swelling and fading, the feature is defeated by its calculation and contrivance, following the opposite trajectory to its protagonist.
Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5
Mon Roi
Director: Maïwenn
France, 2015, 124 mins
Rating: MA
Alliance Francaise French Film Festival
www.affrenchfilmfestival.org
Sydney: 1 – 24 March
Melbourne: 2 – 24 March
Canberra: 3 – 24 March
Brisbane: 11 March – 12 April
Perth: 16 March – 7 April
Adelaide: 31 March – 24 April
Casula: 7 – 10 April
Parramatta: 7 – 10 April
Hobart: 28 April – 4 May
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