Choices and consequences. Most of the time, when we think of choices and consequences, it’s within the framework of ourselves. We view it from the perspective of the decisions we make and the repercussions that follow. In reality, our choices are based on those of others and the consequences that follow them, like the way throwing several stones into a body of water will create ripples that collide and overlap. What we do today, the way we feel about things, are the reverberations of the choices made yesterday, and so on, ad infinitum. Screening in the Marquee section of Atlanta Film Festival 2025 is co-writer/director Julien Colonna’s (Luo Yang’s Girls) new film The Kingdom (Le royaume), a family story blended with a crime thriller in which the concepts of choices and consequences are folded into a story of legacy — the things we create, the things we leave behind.
School is over and 15-year-old Lesia Savelli (Ghjuvanna Benedetti) has simple plans for the summer: spend time with her cousins and perhaps get to know Fabien (Pierre Salasca) a little better. But those plans are interrupted when her illusive father, Pierre-Paul (Saveriu Santucci), sends for her to join him at a villa. What was meant to be a short visit of a few weeks is extended into months as Lesia finds herself drawn into Pierre-Paul’s close circle, being given a chance to see the kingdom Pierre-Paul’s been trying to make for her.
Ghjuvanna Benedetti as Lesia Savelli in THE KINGDOM. Photo courtesy of Metrograph Pictures.
Written by Colonna and Jeanne Herry (In Safe Hands), The Kingdom provides a strong sense of what to expect from the opening scene. Here, we’re introduced to Lesia, part of a group of individuals returning from a boar hunt, who is given the task of field dressing a strung-up boar as the people around her observe like an adolescent tradition, blood splattering her face in a violent communion. While this may seem like a given, what the film presents is more than a cold open, but a harbinger of the melding of tones and concepts at play. Violence like what we observe isn’t uncommon within a community which hunts both for sport and consumption, thereby making Lesia’s actions considered normal and everyday, but in what other ways are these skills useful? In what other ways can they be recontextualized? Between Antoine Cormier’s (Scred TBM) cinematography, Louise le Bouc Berger’s (Homecoming) production design, and Caroline Spieth’s (Visiting Hours) costume design, this opening gives off the sensation of a beautiful family event in Corsica, but all this belies a tension that we don’t know of yet and, it seems, neither does Lesia. All of these choices bring with them consequences, such as giving the impression of a more idyllic tale, a coming-of-age tale of love in the Mediterranean involving family secrets and boys. But when Lesia makes the journey to her father, even amid the continuous beauty maintained through technical elements of the narrative (the aforementioned cinematography, production design, costuming), there arises an undercurrent of dread. We don’t know why, but it’s pervasive. We know it’s not in our imagination because not only is her journey to her father sprung on her, but, despite being surrounded by her father’s compatriots, including her own godfather, she is lonely. There is warmth all around her, either through the natural setting of the Mediterranean in summer or by virtue of what’s within frame, and yet there’s a cold distance between Lesia and everyone else; thereby creating an unrelenting dread.
For her part, Benedetti is striking as the story’s lead. This is her first project and the newcomer never buckles under the weight of her role. In concert with a script that maintains Lesia’s autonomy and sense of self, it’s up to Benedetti to rely on externalizing a great deal of internal strife where dialogue doesn’t come naturally, such as in her initially largely isolated existence upon arriving at her father’s villa or in the opening sequence. To the point of the opening, Benedetti appears to be going through the motions of the field dressing, not disconnected but not enjoying the activity. We later see her descaling fish at the villa and it’s about as routine to her as anything else, which one can attribute to growing up in a seafaring community. This would be as natural to her as tending to crops would be, had she grown up in a farming community. Yet, later, we discover that the only reason she knows how to do what she does, such as field dressing, is because it was the only way to spend time with her distant father. With this knowledge and observing how Benedetti brings Lesia to life on-screen, a hypothesis forms that violence is not something Lesia longs for, but has taken it up in order to connect with her father. Choices and consequences.
Which leads to the core of the film and the film’s title: The Kingdom. By utilizing Lesia as an outsider, Colonna and Herry create and maintain a buzz of high tension that maintains through the majority of the film. Is her father a good man? Does it matter because she’s his daughter? How does one reconcile the truth versus what one feels, especially when the truth is a matter of perspective from the thing sharing said truth? Through bits and pieces, we, like Lesia, start to get a full picture of who Pierre-Paul is, even if we don’t entirely understand the why. What matters is that Lesia and Pierre-Paul are in things together and, from the moment that he brings her in, they are. This means that she’s a part of the struggle to protect that which Pierre-Paul and his people have built, a metaphorical kingdom in which he is ruler and she his heir. By his choices, is it a kingdom worth maintaining due to the cost that keeps him elusive and moving? By the consequences, is it a kingdom worth fighting for if there’s a rising chance of their connection being severed? These are big questions and Colonna and Herry take great pains to patiently lay out the world before asking them of both the characters and the audience. Questions that, Lesia learns, were asked well before the idea of her was a possibility and whose reverberations will continue well past her life right now. What we think is merely a family drama of a daughter desperate to connect with her father transforms into a lesson of regret, responsibility, and consequences, all of which are driven by choices past and present, thereby propelling the narrative (and the audience with it) as it grapples with this notion and the reverberations that follow.
Thematically, The Kingdom is a powerhouse of a tale. It lures you in with family atmosphere, the warmth and longing for connection, even as it opens with violence as both a communal and deeply personal act with far-reaching implications. As on-screen partners, Benedetti and Santucci are marvelous; their believability as father-daughter brought to life through a natural chemistry and performances that captivate. Especially as the lines blur between personal and work, the relationship conveyed by Benedetti and Santucci anchors us in so that we become apprehensive for them, even when tension is at its lowest. Unequivocally, it’s an incredible debut from Benedetti as she makes an indelible impression with her embodiment of devotion and consequence. So much so that the anxiety Benedetti feeds us in the cold open never leaves us, even when the last frame fades away and we’re left with nothing but black, wondering what the next choice will be and how it will ripple outward.
Screening during Atlanta Film Festival 2025.
In theaters May 30th, 2025.
For more information, head to the official ATLFF The Kingdom webpage.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
Great review, & I really liked this flick. I like how it showed the girl and her dad in both good & bad moments. For example, the dad could choose to respond like he did in the boat when she dragged her line, or more kindly like he did later with the phone, or boar hunting, to better results.