Mark Reviews Movies: THE KING'S DAUGHTER

The King's Daughter, Gravitas Ventures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 20, 2022

The central conflict of The King's Daughter is a moral one about power, the sanctity of nature, and the price of potential immortality on the obtainer's soul. That makes for an intriguing setup to director Sean McNamara's historical fantasy, based on Vonda N. McIntyre's novel The Moon and the Sun, but the movie would rather indulge in a series of far more conventional story elements.

The setting is the Palace of Versailles during the reign of King Louis XIV (Pierce Brosnan). The most notable feat of the production is that the filmmakers shot significant portions of the movie on the grounds and inside the real palace, which at least gives this increasingly generic fantasy tale some authentically regal and quite lovely backdrops (all of those lush and elaborate gardens, for example).

At Versailles, Louis has recently returned from his latest military campaign, is shot by a peasant upset with the monarch's egregious spending on multiple wars and dismissal of the commoners, and becomes determined to ensure that his reign continues indefinitely. That's not for his own good, of course, but for the good of France, and we might actually buy that explanation, if only because Brosnan is charming, amusing, and sincere in the role—until an almost-inevitable shift for the character.

The answer could be in the sea, so the king sends out an expedition to find the lost city of Atlantis and capture one of its inhabitants. The royal doctor (played by Pablo Schreiber) theorizes that a mermaid, sacrificed on the event of a lunar eclipse, can grant someone immortality.

Since the hunting party does return with a mermaid (played by a not-too-convincing—even underwater in dim lighting—digital recreation of Bingbing Fan), the rest of the theory seems likely, so the king has the mermaid held in an underground lagoon until the eclipse arrives. By the way, all of this exposition is provided by a series of vignettes, framed within a storybook and narrated by Julie Andrews, so no one can complain that screenwriters Ronald Bass, Barry Berman, Laura Harrington, and James Schamus waste any time getting to the point.

That is at first, to be sure. While the king's plan and a debate over Louis' willingness to kill a living creature for his own benefit unfolds in the background, the real story focuses on Marie-Josèphe (Kaya Scodelario), the king's illegitimate daughter who has lived her life in a convent. Louis decides to bring her to Versailles, give her the chance to prove herself as a music composer, and eventually reveal that he's her father.

He might have an ulterior motive, having to do with the country's diminished coffers and Jean-Michel (Ben Lloyd-Hughes), the very marriageable son of France's wealthiest merchant. Marie-Josèphe, obviously, falls in love with another man: Yves (Benjamin Walker), the captain of the expedition to find the mermaid, who also has some vague legal trouble that makes for a convenient way to add obstacles in the third act. She also starts communicating with the mermaid, leading Louis' personal minister (played by William Hurt) to argue that this "creature" might have a soul—and that its killing could condemn the king's soul.

There's a lot going on this story, in other words. The majority of it feels thinly sketched and far too familiar. The movie's depiction of and feelings toward Louis are particularly jumbled and fluctuating, as the king's mercurial nature becomes more a plot device. Meanwhile, the screenplay can't decide if Marie-Josèphe is fiercely independent or reliant on getting the guy, and as broadly charming as Scodelario is here, that's not enough to compensate for such uncertain characterization.

The most intriguing sections of this story have nothing to do with Marie-Josèphe's hasty romance, work as a composer, or suddenly antagonistic relationship with her father, anyway. That part is in the moral dilemma presented to the king, as well as the blurring between benevolent ruling and pure narcissism.

Since Marie-Josèphe is the focal point, though, that conflict only drives this story toward a third-act rescue mission. The multiple machinations happening in the climax—some especially lazy schemes (Marie-Josèphe just walks past a bunch of musketeers trying to keep her imprisoned), a big fight in the subterranean cavern, a chase toward the sea and against the eclipse—come across as overly convoluted ways to rush to the easiest resolution for that dilemma, as well as the plot in general.

The result is that The King's Daughter only somewhat stands out because of its setting and the promise of an ignored narrative thread. Basically, that means there's nothing special about it.

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