Cinema, streaming, VOD, TV… Find advice from the Première editorial team every Friday.
The film in theaters: Challengers by Luca Guadagnino
A tennis match and a love triangle. This is the backdrop from which Guadagnino draws this fundamentally pop object. The trio of actors combine racket shots and chess moves in this sulfurous game of love. Merging with the ball, the camera tosses the viewer from one temporality to another in an imbroglio of verbal jousting and low blows. To the rhythm of Ross and Reznor’s house thrusts, tennis transforms into the primitive dance of sweaty bodies evolving in disharmony. Challengerswhere when superficial sexy is put at the service of the intensity of a sport.
What’s new at the cinema this week
Series : My little reindeer by Richard Gadd
Don’t be fooled by its cute and intriguing title, My Little Reindeer is not a children’s story. Richard Gadd recounts his harassment by a woman who was crazy about him, and deciphers all the psychological mechanisms that prevented him from immediately filing a complaint against her. Sensitive souls refrain: as in the best true crimes, the series hides nothing of the traumas of this actor-author with a very singular style.
Watch My Little Reindeer on Netflix
The film on VOD: Vermin by Sébastien Vaniček
Come on, another dose of Vermin! This time, we can check on the small screen what Sébastien Vaniček’s first feature film looks like after its public and critical success in early 2024. Is it as cool as the horror films we ingested on VHS or DVD or piracy (depending on your generation)? Like the Evil Dead and co? That’s good, Vaniček is going to make one…
Watch Vermin on VOD on Première Max
The film in streaming: Tehran’s law by Saeed Roustayi
Before Leila and her brothersin competition at Cannes in 2022, Iranian filmmaker Saeed Roustayi signed this devastating thriller, rewarded with two prizes at Reims Polar in 2021. The story may seem seen and reviewed (a cop vs. a drug trafficker), but its treatment is original, especially in the second part of the film which turns everything upside down. Tehran’s law is also a lesson in directing, and a grim dive into a country scarred by contradictions where there are 6.5 million drug addicts while drug possession is punishable by death. A slap, a real one.
Watch The Law of Tehran streaming on Arte.TV
The animated film: Crossing by Florence Miailhe
After 15 years of work, director Florence Miailhe was finally able to release her first feature film, La Traversée, in 2021. A consecration for this great lady of animation, revealed in 2002 with her short film On the first Sunday morning, and celebrated in Annecy in 2015 with an Honorary Crystal. A graduate of Decorative Arts, she creates here an initiatory story around two children lost on the road to exile, visually sublime with her animated paintings.
Watch The Crossing in streaming on Arte.TV
The classic : The Year of the Dragon by Michael Cimino
In the mid-80s, after having ruined a studio (United Artists) because of the failure of Heaven’s Gate, Michael Cimino is a man down. He is trying to regain his commercial health with this nasty thriller: the story of a Vietnam veteran cop (Mickey Rourke, still handsome as a god) who wants to clean up New York’s Chinatown, plagued by the Triads… Carried by an insane cinema energy, galvanized by the Scarface of De Palma which he intends to surpass (he had hired the same screenwriter, Oliver Stone), Cimino multiplies the bravery pieces, the monster shootout scenes, while flavoring the visual clichés of eighties (bling, coke, neon lights) of his intellectual melancholy ruminating on the moral bankruptcy of America. Angry, brilliant and crazy.
Watch The Year of the Dragon Sunday at 9 p.m. on Arte
The documentary: OJ Simpson – Made in America by Ezra Edelman
The disappearance of the famous American footballer pushed Arte to reschedule this fascinating legal documentary in five parts, which won the Oscar in 2017 despite competition from the excellent The 13th by Ava DuVernay and I am not your nigger, by Raoul Peck. Do not be afraid of its long duration (nearly 8 hours in total): the trial is recounted in detail and you can watch it more times, the documentary remaining visible for free in replay until July.
Watch OJ Simpson – Made in America streaming on Arte.TV
