Gianluca Jodice's season opener in Locarno looks back at an oft-filmed chapter in history, but with an austere style that feels decidedly new.

The court of Louis XVI is stripped of a faded, festering husk of itself in The Flood, a stark study of the king’s final days in which the luxurious trappings of the French monarchy disappear before our eyes — until only the literal architecture remains. An impressively austere second feature from Italian director Gianluca Jodice, this is a snappy riposte to earlier cinematic portraits of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, which depicted even their downfalls in the most opulent manner possible.

Such spectacle can serve its own ironic purpose, as with the jagged, whipped-cream excess of Sofia Coppola's 2006 vision. But here, as played by Guillaume Canet and a radiant Mélanie Laurent, the deposed, imprisoned monarchs are mocked for all the pomp and circumstance they've retained: Shrunken and freeze-dried in their filthy robes and increasingly unkempt wigs, they're well ahead of their appointment with the guillotine. A rather austere opener for this year's Locarno Film Festival, "The Flood" may disappoint viewers who want their royalty porn pretty and ostentatious, not artfully painted in various shades of dry rot. But there's something quietly enchanting about its austerity, while the film retains enough handsome Euro-arthouse sheen — on top of the appeal of its name stars — to sell broadly.

Based on the diaries of Louis XVI's valet Jean-Baptiste Cléry (played by Fabrizio Rongione), the film opens immediately after the 1792 uprising, in which the Tuileries Palace was stormed by armed revolutionaries and the monarchy was abolished. The royal family and their entourage arrive after their arrest at the Tour du Temple, a large but sparsely furnished chateau in the center of Paris, where they are locked up while their fate is determined.