Saint-Cyr

The search for using the female as a theme plays a central role in Mazuy’s work. Usually with women as protagonists, her works capture —sometimes noticeably, sometimes in a less obvious manner— the frictions and convergences that shape their bond with the world. The King’s Daughter case confirms this. But it also proves that the director does not need to affix her stories in a contemporary landscape in order to talk about her own time; that she is capable of doing it under the masks of the historical and period films. Set in the late 19th century, the golden age of French monarchy, The King’s Daughter tackles the story of a school devoted to educating the daughters of nobility, run by Madame de Maintenon, who’s married in secret to Louis XIV. There, they receive avant-garde training, but also the certainty that their social survival depends on being chosen by the right man.