MFDB

Storyline

When Louis XIII died in 1643, his son was just five years old. For almost twenty years, France was ruled by the boy’s mother, Anna of Austria.When the young Louis was fourteen, he appeared in a ballet performance together with Florentine musician Jean-Baptiste Lully. A few days later, Jean-Baptiste was appointed ‘Composer of the King’s Instrumental Music’. Under Lully’s musical tutelage, the young Dauphin begins to blossom. Court politics, which now takes place against a background of refined etiquette, begins to turn into a politics of dance. Before long, the resentful French nobility are all dancing to Lully’s ballet music,moving like satellites around Louis, who cuts an elegant figure as ‘the rising sun’. After ascending the throne, Louis invites many members of the aristocracy to live nearby in Versailles, so that he can keep a tight rein on them; he puts on opulent balls to entertain them.More and more, Louis begins to put his faith in the power of music and of ballet. Yet whereas power is at the centre of Louis’ world, Lully focuses his whole life on the King himself – his true, his absolute love. For Lully, who creates a grandiose ballet together with the poet Molière, is blindly devoted to the King, not for a moment considering the fact that nothing lasts forever...

Festivals & Academy awards and others

Berlin International Film Festival 2001
Panorama