King Baby – an allegory about the morally corrupting effect of being in or serving power (Belfast Film Festival at Queen’s Film Theatre) #BFF24

Two men find themselves along in the ruin of an old castle. Sustained by a seemingly endless supply of powder in which to make jelly for dinner, they live out their days as a King and a servant in the French country idyl. The creation of a queen – a mannequin fashioned from a felled tree – introduces company and conflict to the daily rituals of bathing, hunting the rabbit, speechifying and getting ready for bed.

In King Baby, Graham Dickson plays the sneering monarch, an outright bully who belittles his sole human companion. Neil Chinneck is the servant, offering an alternative, more thoughtful outlook on how to live well in the isolated situation. The servant attempts with varying degrees of success to put words into the king’s mouth, and ultimately rebalances the power imbalance to put manners on the king. Yet in doing so, he sacrifices his virtue and becomes as haunted as the original king.

While at first you might hope that the servant will tame the king and the two can live in codependent companionship, this 88-minute allegory about holding power and serving power ultimately concludes that balance isn’t possible. Written and directed by Kit Redstone and Arran Shearing, the homoerotic finale depicts the morally corrupting effect of the patriarchy.

King Baby was developed as a play before morphing into a film. It’s a great modern fairytale and well worth catching if it gets a cinematic release after touring festivals. It was recently screened in the Queen’s Film Theatre as part of Belfast Film Festival.

 

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