It would be easy to dismiss this anti-war film as naive and fey, but personally, I've had enough of sweaty, macho war pictures, and this candy-coloured fairy-tale suits me fine, with its echoes or foretaste of Fellini, Demy, Lester, Altman and Kusturica. The assumption that the mad are really sane is slightly dubious, and some of the more 'significant' messages are heavy-handed, while this paradise seems suspiciously white. Better still are the set-pieces which seem to erupt spontaneously from the narrative, as the fruitful chaos of the mad is asserted over the murderous order of the real world; the giddy Lesteresque farce; and the complex, bleak, inversion of traditional fairy-tales, involving time, midnight, kings, princesses and knights
Review of King of Hearts
