About

“I didn’t make Lancelot to elaborate on a parable […] I’m interested in how he is torn between fidelity and felony, love and purity. He’s a man crushed by the machine of a destiny shaped by luck and predestination…” – Robert Bresson

Lancelot du Lac is Bresson’s droll, de-mysticised retelling of Arthurian Legend. Eschewing the romance and extravagance of most medieval adventures, the filmmaker returns the legend to reality: desires are base, armour clanks endlessly and death in battle is an ignoble, undignified affair. By returning the tale to the earthly, Bresson crafts a film that captures the human qualities of the story – for all their good and ill. It presents a brutal world, though not one without humour, in which attainment rarely leads to fulfilment.

Sir Lancelot returns empty handed from his quest for the Holy Grail. Distraught after losing so many of his fellow knights, he is swept up in a resumed affair with Queen Guinevere, putting himself in danger of rousing the violent ire of her husband King Arthur.

This screening is presented in partnership with Alliance Française de Brisbane.

M | Bloody violence