I Can’t Tell If Robert Pattinson’s French Accent in ‘The King’ Is Terrible or Brilliant

Warning: This article contains mild spoilers for The King on Netflix.

Hi, pardon me, sorry to interrupt your weekend, but do you have a moment to discuss Robert Pattinson‘s French accent in The King? Because I really think this is a pressing matter we need to talk about at your earliest convenience.

In case you haven’t heard, The King is a new period drama now streaming on Netflix. It’s an adaptation of several William Shakespeare plays about King Henry V (played by Timothée Chalamet in the movie), and, for the most part, it’s quite serious. It’s grim and dreary and violent, the way you would expect any film about 15th century England to be grim and dreary and violent.

Enter Robert Pattinson as The Dauphin of France, a commander of the French army and King Henry V’s nemesis in the Battle of Agincourt. We first meet the Dauphin in his tent on the battlefield, when he drops by to intimidate King Henry before their big battle. Having seen The King trailer earlier this year, I was prepared for Pattinson’s ridiculous hair, which I assume is a wig given that Pattinson’s hair did not look like, um, that, back when The King was filming in summer 2018. But I was not prepared for the voice. I was so woefully, tragically not prepared for the voice.

Pattinson either is not aware or does not care that every other person in The King is taking this movie very, very seriously. I would say that he sounds like Pepé Le Pew, but I actually think he sounds more cartoonish than that cartoon skunk. The first thing he says to Chalamet is: “TOO your leet-teel vick-tree,” which according to my Netflix captions, roughly translates to, “To your little victory.” He pairs this statement with a manic smile and a toast. Everyone else in the tent stares at him somberly, as if he weren’t workshopping an offensive character for his sketch comedy show. Then, despite his apparent limited knowledge of the English language, the Dauphin discusses King Henry’s “giant balls and tiny cock” and proceeds to mimic said giant balls and tiny cock with his hands.

Just for fun, here is Chalamet’s reaction to that bit of hand puppetry:

Pattinson sticks with this characterization of the Dauphin as an effeminate French sociopath for the rest of the film. To his credit, he’s incredibly consistent with it, never once slipping out of that broken English. (King Henry even tries to speak to him in French and he refuses; I assume because, unlike Chalamet, Pattinson is not fluent in French.) Anyone who has seen Pattinson in anything else will know he’s doing this on purpose. Pattinson can do accents that are not terrible and has done them quite successfully in films such as Twilight and Good Time. No, he’s choosing to be ridiculous, unhinged, and very, very weird in The King, presumably at the instruction of director David Michôd.

It is equally—if not more—ridiculous, unhinged, and weird as the performance he gives in Robert Egger’s The Lighthouse. The key difference here is that The Lighthouse is an art film about two men (the other being Willem Dafoe) losing their minds. People who go to see The Lighthouse are prepared to have a weird time. The King, however, is not an art film about insanity. The King is a straight-forward period drama that seems, in all other aspects except Pattinson, to be aiming for mainstream Hollywood. People who are clicking on The King on Netflix are not expecting to have a weird time, they’re expecting to gaze longingly at Timothée Chalamet’s cheekbones for two hours.

Perhaps we should applaud Pattinson for sashaying into The King and stubbornly having a good time, despite the surly men around him who are decidedly not having a good time. I won’t pretend to know whether this is historically accurate or not (I assume, uh, not?), but in the context of the film, it’s incredibly out of place. There’s no way to watch—and listen to—Pattinson in these scenes and see him as anything other than “Robert Pattinson being really weird in an otherwise serious period drama.” Whether you think that’s a brilliant or terrible acting choice is up to you. But, personally, I couldn’t be more thrilled to declare 2019 the Year of Weird Robert Pattinson.

Watch The King on Netflix