COMPETITION – Mon Roi, for all misunderstood lovers

Bolstered by the success of Polisse presented in Competition and Prix du Jury at the Festival de Cannes 2011, Maïwenn has taken a certain artistic gamble with Mon Roi. Without being autobiographical, this distanced chronicle deciphers the complex and stormy love story between Tony (Emmanuelle Bercot) and Georgio (Vincent Cassel). It is Maïwenn’s fourth feature film, with a screenplay co-written by Etienne Comar.

Fight scenes don’t scare Maïwenn off. But the love scenes, and scenes showing complicity, inevitably more fluid and less uneven, could have seemed too mawkish for the director. “I realised just how hard it is for me to show people who are happy in a film, without it being silly.” Having resolved to stop ‘procrastinating’, she launched herself into the detailed beginnings of a romantic passion lasting ten years, which slowly takes its toll on those involved. “How can you understand how they keep constantly going back to each other, describe their neurosis and their fights, if you’re not convinced of their love?”

Film still © RR

In Polisse, Maïwenn played one of the main roles. She has voluntarily stepped aside this time to direct, before a reflexive Emmanuelle Bercot. Immobilised by a skiing accident, her character, Tony, watches the destructive relationship linking her to the seductive Georgio with a slightly forced distance. The use of flashbacks strengthens this feeling of distance. Louis Garrel, Isild Le Besco, as well as Norman Thavaud and Camille Cottin play alongside this couple, whom the director wants to appear endearing.

Mon Roi is a “short, sharp” title for a film which asks the painful question: Should you submit to a destructive passion?

Charlotte Pavard

SCREENINGS

Sunday 17 May / Grand Théâtre Lumière / 8.30am – 10.15pm

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