Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Armand images. costumes. acting. music. extraordinary show, Baroque explosion. and little more. because the force of Magimel to create a splendid Louis XIV is central clue. the king is not only a character but an extraordinary scene. because, out of accuracy of facts, the spirit of a past page is all- mighty. colors, intrigues, map of a war. and many seductive nuances of a metamorphose. nothing else. only a form of joy without precise definition. because , like each good films, it is a mixture between fable, parable and fairy tale. great difference - the shadows as bones of light of power conquest. art - only instrument. the best. or only step for a not ending dance.

jm10701 Another reviewer was mistaken when he wrote, "In order to understand the movie, one has to be quite familiar with French history ...." While it wouldn't hurt to know everybody's back story, it is NOT essential to appreciating this movie. Before I watched it, I had never heard of Lully or Cambert or Anne of Austria; I had heard of Molière and Conti but knew nothing about them except their names; but I had no trouble at all following the movie and enjoying it as much as I could with its substantial flaws.The same reviewer complained that the actors playing Molière, Conti and Cambert were much too old, that all three were closer to Louis' age. What bothered me more than the wrong ages of some of the supporting characters was the fabulous gorgeousness of the actors who played Louis and Lully. Please! There are good portraits of both men, and both of them were as homely as my aunt Gertrude - especially Louis.That a man who looked like a gargoyle dwarf (he was only a few inches over five feet tall), saddled at the age of four with a bankrupt, strife-torn, second-rate country, transformed himself into the Sun King and his country into a major world power, and by the force of his will completely dominated Western civilization for nearly a century - and STILL, more than 300 years later, and despite the horrific revolution that destroyed the world he created, is the single most significant person in the history of France (only Napoleon comes close, and he was a flash in the pan compared to Louis) - is a big part of what makes him so extraordinary. If he had looked like Benoît Magimel, what would be the big deal? Gorgeous people automatically control the world; they don't have to DO anything. Louis is fascinating because he was NOT gorgeous, and making him gorgeous wipes out 75% of what makes him interesting.The answer to both that reviewer's and my beefs with this movie is that its makers had no intention of making an historically accurate quasi-documentary about this fascinating man and the almost equally fascinating people around him. They intended to make an overblown, potboiler soap opera based loosely on real people. They made the principals gorgeous because who cares what happens to ugly people? They made the villains grotesque and old because if they had been young we might not have known they were the villains.This is a French movie, but it might as well have been made in Hollywood. It is cheap (and I'm not talking about money) melodrama, with gorgeous, dashing heroes and old, ugly, hunched-over, troll-like villains with grotesque birthmarks on their faces. It was NOT made for experts in French history or any other persons of intelligence and discernment.It was made for an audience that neither knows nor cares how accurate it is or who the people in it are. That's how Hollywood does everything, by formula - the same formula they used in silent westerns, where you knew the good from the bad guys by the color of their hats - so audiences don't have to think, don't have to understand anything. They know by their looks which characters to cheer and which ones to boo, and that's all that matters.

jonathanruano Belgian director Gerard Corbieu's "Le Roi Danse" is really about two things: the life of Jean-Baptiste Lully, composer to Louis XIV, and the creative chaos inherent in musical genius. Lully was probably the most controversial composer ever to serve Louis XIV. He was a Florentine attempting to fit into a French World that did not want him, but which in the end had to acknowledge his musical genius. He was a libertine who shamelessly carried on extramarital affairs with men and women at a time when a man of his station (the kings and nobles were not held to such lofty moral standards) was required to be prudish and monogamous. He was mercurial, unpredictable, unscrupulous, cold and vain at a time when advancement depended on him being subservient and capable of flattery. But Lully's wild and unorthodox ways came from the same well spring as his musical genius, which was why he retained the king's favor for such a long time. This is the Lully that is portrayed so well by Boris Terral in "Le Roi Danse." Experiencing this movie is likely experiencing wild bursts of energy on screen. The music is often the source of that energy, but Boris Terral and Benoit Magimel (whose Louis XIV is the best I have seen) contributes to it as well. Sometimes this film was criticized for its graphic portrayal of Anne of Austria's breast cancer surgery without anesthetic (a scene which, by the way, was faithful to what actually happened) or its tendency to clutter one event after the other in furious succession until Lully's career approaches a crescendo unheard of in the French music world. But it is important to remember that this what the 17th century world was like. Moreover, we are seeing that world largely from Lully's eyes as he recalls his life shortly before an agonizing death from gangrene. For Lully, the 17th century world of a music was filled with ups and downs, humiliations and triumphs, and the agony of it all was that each success (when Lully was successful) was only fleeting because Lully was only someone as long as he retained the king's favor. There is an extraordinary scene where Lully explains to his wife Madeleine that without the king he is nothing. In other words, forget about all the brilliant compositions in the past or all the great work he was doing now. If Lully could not compose works that were better than his last to hold on to the king's favor, his career was over and he was nothing.I could go on, except I would be missing something: the artistry involved in making this film. Visually, this film is great to look at. Moreover, it is easy to mess up a film with such a complex script as this one. But the acting in it is superb, especially from Magimel (Louis XIV), Terral (Lully) and Tcheky Karyo (Moliere). Finally, Corbieu paces everything at an appropriately frenetic pace that we experience and understand the 17th century and all its uncertainties for a composer. In short, Le Roi Danse is a truly brilliant film.

Ludovic Bol The movie misses a better plot, it deserves a better plot when shooting at the Versailles and dealing with Louis XIV. Not that it is bad, just don't expect too much. The costumes, the location, the music, the historical facts, it all seems to be present, but the director just didn't make good use of it. It is an entertaining movie for those who like costume-dramas though, be not mistaken. I had expected it to be better. The characters are well drawn, the actors are good enough, especially the Queen and the Dance Master. The director did not fear the use of some explicit body-language, something that I applaud, it fits well in this landscape of courtly love.