♦ Three friends ***
by Emmanuel Mouret
French film, 1h57
Joan has long since fallen out of love with Victor but suffers from not having the courage to tell him. Her friend Alice reveals to her that she herself is not in love with Eric, her partner, but that her relationship is not in any worse shape. However, they are unaware that he is having an affair with their mutual friend, Rebecca. Joan's decision to leave Victor, and his tragic disappearance, will force each of them to question the reality of their feelings.
Three women, three friends, three ways of approaching the love and talent of Emmanuel Mouret to treat this “happy complexity” in the form of a marivaudage. But comedy rubs shoulders with drama here, seriousness emerges beneath the lightness, and the filmmaker has never been so touching.
» READ THE REVIEW: “Three friends”, Love and disenchantment
♦ Louise Violet ***
by Eric Besnard
French film, 1h48
After years in prison for having participated in the insurrection of the Paris Commune, Louise Violet only wants to work as a teacher. In 1889, eight years after the adoption of Jules Ferry's law which made school free, compulsory and secular, she was sent to a village in Auvergne. But no child shows up in his class. When she plans to call the police, the mayor warns her: she would immediately go from being a foreigner to being an enemy.
Éric Besnard has the excellent idea of focusing on a woman to capture the pivotal era of the beginnings of the school of the Republic. With superb photography, he fleshes it out by painting the portrait of a black hussar and the small rural community where she intends to accomplish her mission: to raise the working classes through education.
» READ THE REVIEW: “Louise Violet”: bringing students to Jules Ferry’s school
♦ The Nevenka Affair **
of Iciar Bollain
Spanish film, 1h52
Inspired by real events, this affair caused a lot of noise at the time in Spain. At the end of the 1990s, a municipal councilor of Ponferrada accused the mayor, Ismael Alvarez, a rising star of the Popular Party, of sexual and moral harassment. Despite the hostility of public opinion towards him, she won her case and succeeded in having him convicted. At the time, the notions of control and consent were not current, and the young woman had all the makings of a storyteller.
Filmed entirely from the young woman's point of view, the film makes us experience with her the process of control and the physical discomfort that results from it. A committed director, Iciar Bollain tackles this social subject while avoiding any didacticism, showing that images, better than words, can convey the reality of this phenomenon.
» READ THE REVIEW: “The Nevenka Affair”, the chilling reality of control
♦ Get to work! *
by Gilles Perret and François Ruffin
French film, 1h24
Gilles Perret and François Ruffin stage the meeting between Parisian lawyer and columnist Sarah Saldmann and people in precarious situations. Some situations are amusing, many others moving because the encounter is possible and above all because the faces and stories of a life of precariousness are moving.
With the promotional tour of this “documentary comedy”François Ruffin, now registered with the environmentalist group, remembers the left fondly. Re-elected in the legislative elections, after a delay of seven points against the RN candidate, he tries to slip between the radical left of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and French social democracy in reconstruction.
♦ The Substance °
by Coralie Fargeat
Franco-British film, 2:21 a.m.
In this female-driven horror film, Demi Moore plays an aging former actress and fitness queen who is offered a mysterious substance to access a “younger, more perfect version” of herself, played by Margaret Qualley. Provided you follow the instructions and only use the treatment every other week for cell regeneration.
Frenchwoman Coralie Fargeat uses genre film to denounce the tyranny of youth and beauty imposed by our societies. Unfortunately, this Faustian pact, stuck in a glossy aesthetic, boils down to a riot of bloody images, completely missing its subject.
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