Kings and Queen

Director Arnaud Desplechin weaves together a complex array of emotions in this personality drama. It centers around two primary characters, Nora, a single mother about to be remarried whose father is on his death bed, and Ismael, her ex-lover (we come to discover) and a slightly neurotic violinist who is accidentally put away in a mental institution. Desplechin juxtaposes the comic and the tragic elements of life with an almost theatrical understanding of the terms. The scenes with Nora are high drama and inevitably tragic, whereas the Ismael's institution antics are decidedly comic. Of course the two intertwine as the paths of the two characters meet again. There is a confession scene in which the dying father tells his daughter what he really thinks that borders on Bergmanesque, and a wonderful scene in which Ismael takes Nora's son through an art gallery and explains his ideas about life. It's a complex film, much of which, no doubt, I probably missed, yet a stirring example of life's emotional ambiguities and our ever changing perceptions of them.