Nyff Review: Louis the Xiv Dies Once Again in Albert Serra’s ‘Roi Soleil’
Albert Serra, after portraying The Death of Louis Xiv, reincarnates the infamous monarch in a modern neon-red purgatory. The familiar face of Jean Pierre-Leaud is replaced by that of frequent Serra collaborator and non-professional actor Lluís Serrat. To describe Roi Soleil as a film would be imprecise; rather, the piece is a filmed performance–an installation–of the agony of the Sun King in a Lisbon gallery. The narrative, like in Serra’s previous work, is fairly straightforward yet abstractly rendered: a more rotund iteration of King Louis–who seems to expand as the piece progresses–suffers from what could most accurately be described as a stomachache, yet continues to shovel food into his mouth in spite of a clear discomfort. He begins erected upright, standing, watching over an anonymous, industrial space–a masterless domain– before taking a fall and continuing his feast laterally. The sounds of his discomfort–sometimes funny in a crude way,
