Istorical drama by Philippe Beaussant's novel Lully ou le musicien du soleil (Lully or the sun-musician). Picture director Corbiau (Farinelli, Music teacher) is fond of creative reconstructions of past events, that are concerned with arts.
Film's characters are the three main persons of the gallant age: king of France Louis XIV (1638-1715), composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) and playwright Jean-Baptiste Moliere (1622-1673).
The plot: Young Italian Lully finds itself in the court of also young Louis XIV. The king loves Lully's music and enjoys dancing in ballets with it. Yet he realizes that he's power applies only on that ballets, as the country is actually ruled by his mother and the ministers. And, when cardinal Mazarin, who was at the head of this government, dies, Louis takes the power in his hands. Now he establishes the Academy of dance and patronizes the arts. Lully and Moliere are invited to work together and to stage plays on the new Versailles scene. But Louis' mother and hypocrites' cabal rise against Moliere's pieces, and the king is forced to ban the piece. At the same time Lully falls into a compromising incident, organized by those hypocrites, yet the king suppresses this incident. He still dances in Lully's ballets, but year by year he loses perfection.
After the incident, when Louis, dancing in the face of his courtiers, didn't manage a complex pirouette, he brokes with dancing. Now the king more attends Moliere's pieces, and Lully looses his state of favourite. Moliere suggests Lully to collaborate in writing french opera, but Lully rejects this suggest. But when he sees the first opera in French and his sister-in-law, who loves him, in the one, he gets inflamed with the idea of french opera. He receives a royal patent on operatic performances and becomes a french opera monopolist. Yet the king doesn't delight this operas that much, and in general because of his wife, Mme de Maintenon (1635-1719), who much showed her religionism and didn't like much Lully. When Lully was dying from an injury, the king didn't even payed a visit to him.
The main merit of the film is the beauty of each frame. Corbiau has managed to show the superb beauty of the age. As we see from the title, the main composition digit in the picture is a dance. Dance - symbol of aesthetically beautiful as a motive force in the real life. Picture's characters prove that their art can be an efficient tool, with which they smite the enemies, on whose side is completely material power. Lully (never names himself as a composer - only as a dancer, and dances he - when on a bender) - it's a dance by assault. Is he conducting, is he going round the hall, is he drawing music - all this is a dance. And dances he as the last time, this is what his life depends on.
Another main merit of the film - it wasn't made in Hollywood (beg your pardon all the admirer's of american films). Le Roi danse is a european version of creating historical films. Unlike the american one, it is a uneconomical cinema, kingly dissipating with money and dramatical effects. American costume film is shoot from a point of view of a plebeian, who has to take delight in the riches until he is send out of the museum. European - from a point of view of an aristocrat, who barely notices the usual setting of his own palace. Here a violin won't whine in time when the viewer should cry, and no one will deliver a monologue explaining the gist of characters' relations. Here scathing terms do not lead to the key dialogue, but subside in the palace passages. As distinct from american cinema of nouveau riches with its coarse emotions, that are simultaneously experienced by a whole crowd of those who payed for the tickets, it is a cinema of prodigal kings, who leave for each viewer a subtle pleasure to think for himself.
Nominations to the "Caezar" prize: Terral (prospect actor), costumes and sound. "Golden Frog" prize for J.Simon's shooting. Takings in France $0.77 mln. Takings in world distribution $1.3 mln. Takings in Spain 15 mln pesetas. Budget 45 mln francs. IMDb raiting - 5.9/181 vote.