The Sun King Movie Review
THE SUN KING
A man has died at the Roi Soleil, a bar-pmu in Versailles. He left behind a winning lottery ticket worth several million euros. With a little more respect for reality and their consciences, the witnesses to the tragedy could walk away with the money… What if the truth were just a well-crafted scenario?
Film Review
With Le Roi Soleil, Vincent Maël Cardona continues his exploration of social tensions and collective narratives, begun with Les Magnétiques, his first feature film, which won the César for Best First Film in 2022. Presented at the Midnight Screening at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, this new film follows in this vein while offering something completely different, more of a stylistic exercise.
While the prologue takes place in the Palace of Versailles, The Sun King is not a historical film. On the contrary, very contemporary, its story takes place almost entirely in a bar-PMU in Versailles. When a regular dies suddenly, leaving behind a winning lottery ticket worth several hundred million euros, the other customers and staff, witnesses to the scene, are confronted with this unexpected opportunity, consider appropriating the ticket by developing an alternative version of events. The film then becomes a closed-door drama where the line between reality and fiction blurs, with each character proposing their own hypothesis to justify possession of the ticket.
Adopting the narrative model of Rashōmon, Vincent Maël Cardona uses inventive staging to involve the viewer in this treasure hunt. The dialogues, often caustic, reveal the tensions between the characters and highlight the cultural and social differences that oppose them. The camera explores the geography of the place, its smallest corners, including the kitchens, the basements, the backyard, and the karaoke room. Playing on the tension of his characters and the conflicts, he maintains an atmosphere of suspicion and lust that is largely responsible for the film’s performance – even if we can express some reservations here and there.
In addition to its fluid direction, the actors’ performances contribute greatly to the film’s effectiveness. Pio Marmaï plays Livio, a vulnerable cop torn between morality and desire. Lucie Zhang, the revelation of Audiard’s Olympics, brings a discreet intensity to her character, who seems the only one to truly control her emotions and maintain a bit of lucidity, while Sofiane Zermani, Xianzeng Pan, and Panayotis Pascot effectively round out this beautiful, eclectic cast.
More entertainment than a truly in-depth philosophical reflection, The Sun King questions human nature in the face of temptation and moral choices, managing its suspense and its balance between dark humor and social criticism relatively well.