It adds up to more than the sum of its parts, but you may not realize it for a day or so.

| Oct 5, 2019

Desplechin's big, bold, iconoclastic feature Rois et Reine is a disconcerting film that can turn your head at the oddest moments.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 30, 2006

Funny, absurd, often mocking itself and always quoting cultural history.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 30, 2006

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2006

While these characters' lives are melodramatic, individual scenes burst with kinetic energy from fast editing and an script that deftly underscores the destructive nature of male-female relationships.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Oct 29, 2005

There's a looseness to the camera work and storytelling that's appealingly breezy: This film feels, for better or worse, like real life.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 26, 2005

Kings and Queen, full of passion and humor, madness and grief, is close to a masterpiece.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 18, 2005

Both leisurely and breathtakingly immediate.

| Original Score: A- | Jul 5, 2005

It's a puzzle of a film, but not the kind that intimidates you with inscrutability so much as one that beckons you into its antic eccentricity.

| Jun 24, 2005

[Desplechin] gives these characters the time to develop, to display their nuances, to establish their relationships with each other, to talk out their destinies.

| Jun 24, 2005

The film is delectable and keeps you eager to see what's served next, but also is ridiculously rich, overly long and difficult to digest. Still, it's a feast you won't want to miss.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 3, 2005

A richly observed study of the sticky complexities of family dynamics.

Full Review | Jun 3, 2005

If the film is less than the sum of its parts, then some of those parts are touched by genius.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 31, 2005

The movie, directed by Arnaud Desplechin and written by him with Roger Bohbot, begins as such a straightforward portrait of ordinary life that it's unsettling to find layer after layer of reality peeled away.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 27, 2005

Kings and Queen is a marvelously textured and civilized study of two tormented souls finding redemption not in each other, but in themselves and in other people.

| May 26, 2005

There's no ready capsule description of Kings and Queen, but its fluid, dynamic approach to melodrama and two compelling central performances create an impressive portrait of intertwined lives.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 21, 2005

The film is a soap opera that through layering and texture is made into something rich, strange, and unforgettable.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 20, 2005

Category-defying film that's as smart and emotionally resonant as it is entertaining.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 19, 2005

Contemporary and specific ... but the melodramas also play out on a universal plane, like the lives of the gods.

| May 19, 2005

This enjoyable French pic welds together drama, melodrama and comedy in a blend with potentially strong European audience appeal.

| May 19, 2005