So Nora is a difficult person to like, or to forgive. Of course Devos is an attractive woman, and anyone could be excused for viewing Nora lustfully, but it's not so easy to manage. I think Desplechin pushes his audience, male and female, toward a more complicated response, something closer to classical female jealousy. We admire Nora, we may fear and envy her. We bow to her superiority, yearn for her destruction and marvel at her resiliency. Much later in the film, when someone she loves -- again, it's probably the only person -- says monstrous, unforgivable things to her and wounds her deeply, we feel both gratified and implicated. We would be too polite to say those things to her, but we've been thinking them all along.

Let's back up a little. "Kings and Queen" begins as two different stories -- almost two different movies -- told in different styles. At first they seem unrelated, but we presume correctly that they will eventually collide, and more or less merge. Nora's saga is ripe melodrama, verging on tragedy; this rich, beautiful, contented and emotionally cloistered bourgeoise is subjected to grotesque emotional torment, visited by two ghosts (one forgiving, one much less so), forced to confront or at least consider her own superficiality and egotism. It's hard to say that she doesn't deserve every minute of it.

Meanwhile, the story of Ismaël (Mathieu Amalric), a disheveled classical violist whose life has come spectacularly unglued, unfolds in a mode closer to slapstick or farce. In fairness, Ismaël is every bit as impossible and self-absorbed as Nora (and it isn't giving away anything important to reveal that they used to be lovers). But in the Kafka-meets-Chaplin world where he finds himself -- he owes hundreds of thousands in back taxes, has his apartment seized (thanks in part to his drug-crazed attorney) and is forcibly committed to a mental institution -- you can't help feeling sympathy for him, a sympathy that Ismaël, little by little, begins to earn. During our time with him, he will forge a reconciliation with his parents, endure a violent shootout, give away part of his inheritance, fall in love again and decide whether or not to adopt a child, to mention just a few things.

It's hard to describe what makes this interlocking, almost biblical narrative, in which the high will be brought down and the low elevated, so compelling. Desplechin's filmmaking can swing from artfulness to transparency and then back again within moments. His subtly disturbing editing tends to jitter people around the room as if we're simply skipping certain moments within scenes, and the soundtrack music will swell to an intrusive, almost campy level before retreating again.

At the same time, Desplechin never undermines the emotional reality of his characters or situations (the screenplay is co-written with Roger Bohbot); with all their wounds and flaws, Nora and Ismaël and the large cast of characters around them are recognizably human, close cousins to ourselves. In the end, forgiveness, or at least acceptance (which is right next door), is our only option, and his too. If Nora's preening shallowness and Ismaël's self-absorption bother us, it's because they are all too familiar.

Before we move on, one illustration of the film's peculiar density and internal allusiveness: About halfway through, when Ismaël is in especially bad shape, he pays his weekly visit to his psychiatrist. She asks him an important question, given his reputation as an irresponsible skirt-chaser: She wonders if he'd be more likely to forgive the sins of a beautiful woman than an ugly one. This is a question we in the audience have likely been pondering, but Ismaël denies it with great sincerity.

Anyway, so much is going on in this scene (and every other) that the question kind of looms up before you for a moment and then fades. Ismaël has come to the shrink's office accompanied by a couple of muscular male nurses (whom he calls Prospero and Caliban), because he's recently been locked up as a potentially violent nutjob. Then there's Dr. Devereux (Elsa Wolliaston), who discusses Yeats' poetry with him, along with his erotic dreams about the queen of England. Despite her classically French name, Devereux seems from her accent and speech patterns to be American, or possibly British. This eminent shrink whose name strikes fear into the hospital staff is also an imposing black woman, with a gnomic manner more than a little suggestive of the Oracle from the "Matrix" movies.

You can't call this exactly implausible or surreal -- of course there could be an eminent African-American woman doctor working in France -- and Dr. Devereux's color and gender really don't pertain to Ismaël's story in any direct way. But this may convey some idea of how much is going on in every scene of "Kings and Queen," how loaded with eccentric detail it is, and how finely its mode of wrenching emotional realism is balanced on the edge of absurdity and chaos. With all his artifice, his prodigious narrative risks and seemingly undisciplined mélange of styles and tones, Desplechin has made a film that feels more like real life than anything I've seen in years, from any source. It's a masterpiece.

"Kings and Queen" opens May 13 in New York, May 20 in Boston and Los Angeles, May 27 in Chicago and June 3 in San Francisco, with other cities to follow.

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