Following the abdication of Isabella II, Amadeo I (Àlex Brendemühl), Duke of Aosta, from the House of Savoy is elected as King of Spain by dictator General Pim (Jimmy Gimferrer, also the film's cinematographer) who is assassinated just days before Amadeo arrives from Turin, and Minister Serrano (Francesc Garrido) warns him that he may suffer the same fate should he accept the crown. Idealistic Amadeo intends for his to be a modern parliamentary monarchy that guarantees "liberty and progress for all," proposing literacy programs for the poor, a better distribution of wealth, programs to incentivize industry and agriculture, and the establishment of schools and universities for the people. He quickly learns, however, that the banks, the government, and even those within the castle are expecting a puppet monarch, and Amadeo is not allowed leave the castle and its grounds for his own safety. Invitations to bankers, parliament, and the church to argue his causes are repeatedly stood up and he is left to amusements both frivolous and illicit facilitated by assistant, confidante, and occasional lover Alfredo (Lorenzo Balducci). Minister Serrano brings him documents to sign daily, but Amadeo does not realize just how much little authority he has, and how much of that he has abdicated, until Minister Serrano is arrested and the new head of government Minister Zorilla (Gonzalo Cunill) proves less indulgent. During his wife Maria Victoria's (Bárbara Lennie, TH E SKIN I LIVE IN) brief visit, she observes how he has changed and what the people think of his failure to deliver on the promises of justice and freedom stamped on his coin. After an assassination attempt, the castle is abandoned by the servants and Amadeo is left alone to ponder how he can unite all "who invoke the name of the nation" when they are all fighting for their own self-interest.

The narrative feature directorial debut of Catalan Lluís Miñarro – whose producer credits include THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA, ECCENTRICITIES OF A BLONDE-HAIRED GIRL, and UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES – STELLA CADENTE is an intimate and semi-fanciful look at the brief reign (1871 to 1873) of a king who had to give up (with his sole achievement seeming to have been teaching lusty cook Eloïsa [Lola Dueñas, VOLVER] how to read). The film deliberately eschews scenes of spectacle in favor of intimacy, with crowd noises, exploding bombs, and even Amadeo's address to the people theatrically offscreen; but the film never really convincingly shows Amadeo trying to get his ideas across and being stifled, merely insulted and embarrassed by the way ministers and bankers can so readily dismiss a royal invitation and seeming from early on what his wife described as "the capacity of a king, limited to pensive expressions with so little authority." Cloistered within his own castle, Amadeo surrounds himself with beautiful objects like crystals, a peacock that seems to have free run of the palace, a jewel-encrusted turtle that lumbers around the sets and through the story, and courtesans. While the young servant (Àlex Batllori) swiping Amadeo's razor to shave his own pubic hair seems a contemptuous act, his stealing the skinny-dipping king's clothing and wearing them or licking Amadeo's crystal ornaments seem almost reverential next to Alfredo masturbating with a hollowed-out melon that it appears is served to the vegetarian king later in the day. Although the compositions draw heavily from Spanish painting – with the exception of an audacious recreation of Gustave Courbet's "L'origine du monde" with a male "model" – the digital cinematography has the a certain HD video look to it stripped of any film look filtering, giving the period production a certain European television look of the previous decade of early digital production. Miñarro engages in avant-garde touches both playful and downright bewildering (even reckless), from twin ministers named Castor and Polux (Greek twin actors Dimitris Daldakis and Andreas Daldakis) lurking in the background and exchanging knowing nods, to Amadeo and Maria Victoria separately twisting and swaying to Les Surfs' Spanish cover of Dusty Springfield's "I Only Want to Be With You" and Françoise Hardy's "Comment Te Dire Adieu" (even classical cues by Puccini and Rachmaninov are anachronistic). Although the end credits sequence reprises The Surfs' cover with the actors abandoning all theatricality and mugging for the camera, Miñarro demonstrates an assured hand as a director technically and employs actors who it seems can be left to their instincts when posed as compositional elements in what is ultimately is more of a character study in ennui and erotic abstraction than a tale of political intrigue (with Miñarro comparing Amadeo to a fading rock star in the UK DVD interview).