[yasr_overall_rating]
Tony is admitted to a rehabilitation center after a serious skiing accident. Dependent of medical staff and painkillers, she takes the time to remember the tumultuous love story she lived with Georgio.
When we meet Tony (Emmanuelle Bercot), she’s literally on the precipice: about to plunge down a frozen slope on her skis. But we soon discover she’s been on a downhill trajectory for more than a decade, as she contemplates the many (many!) ups and downs of her relationship to Georgio (Vincent Cassel), her ex-husband.
Alternating between scenes of Tony’s slow, painful rehabilitation from a knee injury and flashbacks to her earlier life, including how she and Georgio met and fell in love, “My King” follows Tony as she moves from starry-eyed to disillusioned. What follows is a passionate, turbulent descent into doomed love bordering on sexual obsession. We discover Georgio’s many flaws along with Tony: his womanizing, his drug addiction, his financial irresponsibility… and watch as he charms his way back in to her life and her bed over and over.
So why watch? Bercot’s Tony makes “My King” riveting. By turns shattered and luminous, she delivers an astounding, can’t-look-away performance. Every emotion is laid bare, making it very easy to sympathize with (if not totally approve of) her romantic compulsion. Cassel is reliably believable as her tender then callous, self-obsessed ex, and a solid cast of friends and family create a layered, nuanced experience.
While seeming to ask, “how well do we know anyone, even ourselves?” Bercot’s glowing smile answers, “does it matter?” And even though, by the end, Georgio has lived up to his joking assertion that he’s the “king of the jerks,” Tony’s rapt gaze, yearning evident in every line of her body, tells us that this torturous reign is far from over.
Opens at the Angelika Film Center in Dallas Friday, September 9th
