The year begins under the best auspices for auteur cinema with two films of rare beauty by Jia Zhangke and Pedro Almodóvar.
Are the beginnings of the year becoming the highlights of the cinematographic year? Already in 2024, we were surprised to have seen three films in mid-February – The Beast by Bertrand Bonello, May December by Todd Haynes, and Without ever knowing us by Andrew Haigh – which we guessed would remain until the end of our strongest emotions of 2024.
2025 is even quicker: two sublime films are being offered at the beginning of January, The Room Next Door by Pedro Almodóvar et Wild Fires de Jia Zhangke.
Jia Zhangke’s film history
Wild Fires, First of all. One of the many merits of Jia Zhangke’s new film is to invent a kind of diminishing cinema. After almost thirty years of cinema and around fifteen feature films, the director now draws on the stock of his own images to recycle them. Thus, only a third of the film required new shots. The other two thirds are only made up of shots from his previous features, or shots not retained, or images taken during filming. But as he has always filmed the same bodies (those of his actresses Zhao Tao and Li Zhubin) and the same settings (a few spectacular places where the changes in China are recounted from one century to the next, from one economy to another, etc.), the film becomes a moving document on the work of time and the incredible predisposition of cinema to make it tangible.
In two hours, the entire recent history of China rewinds before our eyes, the entire history of the cinema of Jia Zhangke and his models, and our entire life as a cinema spectator too, both such an image seeming to emerge from Platform (2003) or Still Life (2007) carries with it our own situation when we discovered it, where and with whom we were, the moment in our life when we stood…
A film of conquest
The Room Next Door is also a great review film. It comes down to the subject – the way a person chooses to anticipate and organize their death. This is also due to the form – where the mastery seems to have reached such a degree, such a power of condensation that each plane seems inhabited by all the emotions of a life. And yet, it is also a film of conquest, where the septuagenarian filmmaker sets off to attack another continent (English language, foreign actresses, etc.) and brilliantly succeeds in this challenge. This week we are releasing a special edition entirely devoted to the work of Almodóvar, which already spans five decades, includes many peaks, but still seems capable with this new feature film, sublime from start to finish, at ever-higher heights of beauty, inspiration and emotion.
The Wild Fires. The Room Next Door. Two splendid films which reflect the experience of human life in its fragility and its beauty with an extraordinary meditative power. We can’t think of a better way to start the year.
