Kings & Queen
A film can be smart and subtle and still be a roller coaster ride. Case in point:Kings and Queen; Arnaud Desplechin's brilliant, exhilarating movie never takes a predictable turn. We follow two people along mostly parallel paths:  Nora (Emmanuelle Devos, fromRead My Lips), a chic gallery owner with an ailing father and an impending marriage, and Ismael (Mathieu Amalric), a hyperactive musician who's been sent to a psychiatric hospital against his will. The story of the self-contained Nora can be as scorching as an Ingmar Bergman movie (especially late in the film), while daffy Ismael's tale is a screwball comedy at times--complete with a droll Catherine Deneuve as his bemused doctor. Desplechin'sHow I Got Into an Argument… (My Sex Life)was one of the best European films of the 1990s (also starring Amalric and Devos), and he is gifted with a sure sense of human behavior as well as cinematic dexterity.. Rarely have so many scenes of people talking in rooms flown by so quickly. Movies need not travel to exotic locales to summon up an adventure, and this is film adventuring of a high order.--Robert Horton