♦ When autumn comes ***
by François Ozon
French film, 1h42
Michelle (Hélène Vincent), an uneventful retiree, retired to her stone house in a village in Burgundy, goes to church, cultivates her garden and shares a few afternoons with her great friend Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), installed not far from there. While she has to drop off her grandson for fall vacation, her daughter Valérie eats a pan of mushrooms picked up that morning by Michelle and ends up in the hospital.
So a missed act or a simple accident? This film combines, against the backdrop of forest walks, country life with all the appearances of normality and a joyously amoral poisonous comedy. Hélène Vincent and Josiane Balasko, who François Ozon had already filmed in Thanks to God, They form a delectable duo with opposite temperaments and show, if there was still a need, to what extent they are great actresses.
» READ THE REVIEW: When autumn comes by François Ozon: grandmothers not so respectable
♦ All We Imagine as Light ***
by Payal Kapadia
Film free-if, 1h55
Three women in the Bombay crowd. Prabha, a devoted and solitary nurse who has not heard from her husband abroad for years, Anu, one of her young colleagues, secretly in love with a Muslim and forced into furtive meetings, and their eldest Parvaty, a widow about to be evicted from her doomed building. The first two will help him for a weekend to move to his native village, by the sea.
With her unique touch, mixing realism and dreaminess, Payal Kapadia opposes sorority and gentleness to the insidious violence of a country which represses the feminine. After Santoshreleased this summer, by Anglo-Indian Sandhya Suri, and Girls Will Be Girls by Shuchi Talati, this film confirms the emergence of a whole generation of filmmakers ready to bring a female perspective to their country.
» READ THE REVIEW: All We Imagine as Lightthree women looking for love in Bombay
♦ Drone ***
by Simon Bouisson
French film, 1h50
In an abandoned factory with mysterious basements, Émilie meets an almost silent drone in a frightening face-to-face encounter. This architecture student, feeling bad about herself, sees him reappear in front of the bay window of her apartment perched at the top of a Parisian tower. From then on, he appears every day when night falls. To meet her needs, the student practices caming : via a site, she shows her body to clients who pay her. Is the drone piloted by one of them who has discovered its true identity? Or by a man she meets every day?
For his first film, Simon Bouisson imbues the story with an urban and nocturnal atmosphere with increasing tension. He deliberately exploits the fluidity of the panoramic shots and the dizzying agility of the drone, which has become a character with its own point of view. With this fiction, the filmmaker probes the voyeuristic and exhibitionist excesses multiplied by social networks and technology in our image society which increasingly commodifies intimacy and the female body.
» READ THE REVIEW: DroneÉmilie under the eye of an oppressive camera
♦ Joker: Folie à Deux **
Todd Phillips
American film, 2:19 a.m.
Five years after the first opus of Joker and the murderous drift of Arthur Fleck – Batman’s sworn enemy –, the time has come for accountability. This sequel combines a trial film, a crazy romance and a musical comedy justified by Arthur Fleck’s need for often heartbreaking dreamlike escapes. Skinnier than ever, Joaquin Phoenix once again proves breathtaking as a skinned alive victim of mental disorders and as a misunderstood loner transcended by love. In this crazy pas de deux, Lady Gaga brings her talent and madness to a character with opaque contours (the future Harley Quinn from the comics) who arouses surprisingly little emotion.
In an aesthetic of a grimy American city from the 1980s, Todd Phillips multiplies spectacular shots in warmer tones and destroys at all costs the political icon created, in spite of himself, by those who wanted to give him meaning.
» READ THE REVIEW: Joker. Folie à deuxlove between psychiatric hospital and court
♦ The Outrun*
de Nora Fingscheidt
British film, 1h58
Adapted from a bestselling book by Amy Liptrot (The gaped. Pocket) which tells how this journalist weaned herself off alcohol and London nights by returning to her native island in the Orkney archipelago, in the north of Scotland, the film was produced by its main performer, Saoirse Ronan. It also constitutes the main asset of a film whose fragmented staging, multiplying flashbacks, childhood memories and animated naturalistic notes, ends up burying us under a deluge of images and sensations. What remains is the beauty of the landscapes and the telluric force that emanates from this wild nature, a character in its own right in this story of redemption.
⇒ Find reviews of films released last week
• No ! * Why not ** Good film *** Very good film **** Masterpiece
