Kings and Queens

The stories of two desperate characters turn out to share an important link in this drama from French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin. Nora (Emmanuelle Devos) is a woman in her mid-thirties who wants people to believe that her life is going just the way she wants. But a look below the surface shows this isn't quite the case; she's been divorced twice, her latest relationship is on the rocks, her ten-year-old son, Elias (Valentin Lelong), is becoming increasingly withdrawn, and her father (Maurice Garrel) is in poor health. When Nora learns that her father's digestive problems are actually cancer and he may only have a few days left to live, she desperately wants to turn to Ismael (Mathieu Amalric), her second husband. But Ismael is having a crisis of his own after a pattern of increasingly strange behavior has led him to an involuntary stay in a mental hospital.