Le Roi Danse (The King Dances) (review)

Gérard Corbiau's Le Roi Danse (2000; released with subtitles 2008) "puts its foot forward," as it were, from the very beginning. Dancing feet, elegantly slippered and superbly arched, propelled both King Louis IV and his court composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) to heights of power and glory. But those same feet, damaged and broken, ultimately brought both men down. The aging Sun King stumbled badly and never danced again. And after suffering a freak accident to his right foot, the venerable Lully took to his bed and died of gangrenous infection. A metaphor for life and art, the dance, like the meteoric careers of both men, defied gravity and circumstance in its initial ascent and fell back to Earth in its final trajectory of failure and disgrace. Likewise, Le Roi Danse initially leaps forward in its breathless pace, propulsive editing, and blazing color palette; but at the end it lapses into the still point of a somber and measured eulogy for a vanished Golden Age.

Lully was, according to French Baroque music historian William Christie, a "national figure" from his early days, and long after his death he was "canonized not only by the aristocracy, the literati, and the musical educated, but by everybody in France." His god-like standing in the world of French music constituted a parallel to the divine appointments of his patron, Louis XIV, who reigned from 1643 to his death in 1715. Together they ruled; and together they repeatedly bickered and reconciled in a symbiotic artistic and political embrace.

The film opens in 1687 when the aging Lully, in defiance of the King's absence at a court performance, orders his orchestra to begin to play. But while pounding his staff into the floor to keep time, he stabs himself in the foot and takes to his bed, facing the amputation of his foot. "Not my leg," he cries, "not a dancer's leg!" Flashback: It is 1653. The young Louis, not yet a King, prepares to make his dancing debut as Apollo. The boy Lully, newly arrived from his native Italy, and currying favor with the future King, presents him with a specially crafted pair of dancing slippers. Reluctant at first, the King tries them on and is soon dancing his approval. Eight years later, upon the death of Cardinal Mazarin, the King claims the throne and demands his autocratic power over all affairs of state and art. Lully's music by now is setting the King to dancing, and the King's favor protects Lully from the court intrigues against his increasingly licentious lifestyle. Lully's one wish to the King is granted: he is now proclaimed a French citizen. Both Lully and the King bask in the same divinely-appointed glow, Sun Kings alike, of State and of Music.

But both are inevitably consumed by their own egos. Against the warnings of his mother, the King grows increasingly arrogant in his God-like assumptions and foolish extravagances at the Versailles Court. Lully is likewise autocratic in his presumptions that he is the god of music, and only he composes for France and the King. Both will pay a price: the King lapses into conservative politics and religious intolerance; Lully finds himself estranged from the Court; and both will confess they are alone and friendless.

Enter the third angle of this tripartite story, Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin). After years of acting and supplying one-actors in the provinces with his own touring company, we see him back in Court, also enjoying the King's favor, even when his satiric plays offend the religious "zealots" at court (as in the alleged insults to religion in a performance of Tartuffe, 1641). His targets include silly young bloods, jealous/henpecked husbands, misers, coquettes, hypocrites and physicians. The King, reluctantly bowing to his mother's pressure, bans Molière's play. Meanwhile, Molière desires to strike a bargain with Lully: They will compose comedy-ballets as a counter to the current popularity...