The King review

I watched The King because I am love with Gael Garcia Bernal. He is, in my opinion, the most delicious-looking man in the world. I want to devour him, and I want him to devour me. Obviously I knew nothing about the film prior to watching (apart from the all-important fact that GGB was in it) because when he started speaking English my jaw dropped to the floor. This was the first time I had heard him speak English. I learnt later that this movie was in fact his first English-speaking role. Honestly, him speaking English took away some of his allure. It must be his swarthy Spanish-speaking ‘otherness’ that I am attracted to.

Nevertheless, he soon took his shirt off and voila, allure back intact. Frailty thy name is women indeed. Or, frailty they name is Emma, at the very least.

GGB plays a young (late teens? Early 20s?) man who just got out of the marines after having served for 3 years. Here we see the predictable prostitute scene of course, cos ya know, men who have been in the armed services NEED to have sex once they are on a break, it’s programmed into them you see – they are big strong men who need to penetrate women to maintain that big strong manliness. Groan.

Once that scene is out of the way (shame on whoever directed it for your lack of originality, by the way), GGB makes his way to his father’s hometown. His ‘father’, David, is a man he has in fact never met. His mother was David’s old flame (a prostitute? I wasn’t clear on this). Since then, David has become an evangelistic Christian, married and had 2 teenaged children. He has also become the pastor of a church. Anyway, disasters of biblical proportions follow, including GGB seducing his 16-yr old half-sister. It could have been a really good movie if the characters had a little more depth. GGB was initially presented as a bit of an enigma but it soon became clear that he was mentally deranged. Yet, this was not explored at all. In fact, I think GGB might have felt a little short-changed in his first English-speaking role—he barely said anything!!!!!!!! Perhaps a little more dialogue would have helped the main characters come to life a bit more.