How do some marriages work so harmoniously, while others become a source of life-long frustration? That’s the mystery at the heart of actress-turned-director Maiwenn’s vibrant My King. The film earned the Best Actress prize last year at Cannes for Emmanuelle Bercot’s heartbreaking lead performance. Tony (Bercot), an accomplished lawyer, is seduced by Georgio (the brilliant Vincent Cassel), a sexy, stylish man of the world given to flights of charmingly offbeat spontaneity. Tony’s younger brother Solal strongly suspects that Georgio isn’t right for her, but Tony plunges in anyway, embarking on a ten-year odyssey that initially has many highpoints, but soon dissolves into a sobering period of successive disappointments.

Both Tony and Georgio are intelligent, sensitive human beings. Both possess a healthy array of flaws, yet both are willing to make compromises when necessary. They found tremendous chemistry when they met, so why do they come to vex each other so? Maiwenn has made a rare movie where both male and female viewers will develop different theories concerning our fraught need to feel simultaneously wild and free and safe and domesticated. – Jaie Laplante