A Bear in the Jura, Love in the Present, Bird… Films to see and not to see this week

Eephus, the last lap – To have

Drama by Carson Lund – 1 h 38

« What will we become, Joe DiMaggio ? » That is the question. Their baseball field is going to be destroyed. It will be replaced by a school. In New England in the 1990s, the news was enough to shock the regulars, who were going to play their last match. They are in their forties, with brioche and bad knees. Their jerseys hug them tightly. They are amateurs, small-time athletes. Their meetings served as a relief for them. It was their secret garden, their parenthesis. They talked about everything and nothing, knew each other by heart, no longer had the strength to get angry. The arguments belonged to folklore. The score mattered little. On the sidelines, an old supporter counts the points with ridiculous mania. They continue to act as if.

Sentimental without being tearful, with a distress that does not puff out the chest, Carson Lund’s first film is in line with The Last Session by Bogdanovich, another twilight metaphor, farewell to a buried world. AND. N.

Also read
Our review of Eephus. The last lap: lost balls

Love in the present – To have

Drama comedy by John Crowley – 1 h 48

It is through a collision that Almut enters Tobias’ life. This rising culinary star bumps into this marketing director of a breakfast cereal company on the road, who is depressed about his impending divorce. To make amends for sending him to the hospital, she invites him to dinner in her Michelin-starred London establishment. Sparks don’t just happen on the plate. She is an extrovert who is aiming for a Bocuse d’or. He, no longer a blue flower, dreams of starting a family. Love in the present follows their trajectory at three key moments: the beginnings of their romance, the birth of their daughter and Almut’s fight against terminal cancer. These chronologies intertwine in a big bang of joyful little nothings and more melancholy reminiscences.

Irish director John Crowley weaves a reflection on the moments that change us, and those that build us, on the time that escapes all control and recomposes memories. Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield breathe lightness and absurdity into this score. C. J.

Also read
Our review of Love in the Present: The More Beautiful Life Will Be

Maja, a Finnish epic – To have

Drame de Tiina Lymi – 2 h 44

A land as majestic as it is inhospitable, particularly in winter. This is where Maja settles, once married by her father to Janne, a modest, bearded and benevolent fisherman. Because this patriarchy hides true love. After an excruciating wedding night, the two young spouses frolic in the frozen water and warm up on the rocks. Janne builds her beloved a solid house, a warm home which soon welcomes four beautiful, blond children. No crying, no beatings, no marital rape. Arranged marriage becomes a factor of emancipation for the young woman who was initially submissive and illiterate. Janne gives her a slate so that she can learn to write. But the war comes to thwart these happy days.

Maja, a Finnish epic looks a bit like a mild version of The piano lessonJane Campion’s palme d’or. That said, Tiina Lymi’s film is less an epic than a melodrama, or at least the portrait of a woman, more intimate than epic. It can be seen as a Christmas story. AND. S.

Also read
Our review of Maja, a Finnish epic: the portrait of a woman from the 1880s

Bird – We can see

Drama by Andrea Arnold – 1 h 58

Bailey, 12, lives with his brother Hunter and his father Bug in a squat. Bug, tattooed from head to toe, rides an electric scooter and plans to make money with a Colorado toad who spits hallucinogenic slime when we play music. When this social case tells Bailey that he is getting married to his new girlfriend he met three months earlier, the young teenager refuses to play bridesmaid. Children are more mature than adults, irresponsible and even violent. A group of kids are also leading punitive expeditions against parents in the neighborhood who mistreat their offspring, and there are many of them. Bailey’s stepfather is also a thick-skinned bully who terrorizes his mother and siblings. The chronicle of misery takes a different turn with the arrival of a stranger in Bailey’s world.

And Bird takes off in its last part and manages to escape from a naturalistic and conventional painting of the working classes, it remains far below the Animal kingdom. Next to Thomas Cailley’s fantastic bestiary, Andrea Arnold’s bird looks a bit like a plucked bird. AND. S

Also read
Our review of Bird: Flight of the Bumblebee

Quiet life – We can see

Drame d’Alexandros Avranas – 1 h 39

A title in English (in place of another title in English, Apathy). A Greek director. An Austrian aesthetic (we think of Michael Haneke). A syndrome observed in Sweden which affects children of refugees from a never-named country (Ukraine?). Funny salad. Alexandros Avranas is inspired by the “resignation syndrome”, a phenomenon which affects hundreds of children pushed on the path of exile with their parents. Out of despair, these children plunge into a coma. A way of withdrawing from the misfortune of the world, of extracting oneself from a joyless reality – former Yugoslavia yesterday, Syria today, there is no shortage of hell on Earth. The two little daughters of Sergei and Natalia “absent” themselves when their asylum request is rejected.

The coldness of the staging chases away all pathos. To the point of being freezing and killing all emotion. You have to wait until the very end for a little human warmth to warm hearts. Characters and spectators alike. AND. S.

A bear in the Jura – To avoid

Comedy by Franck Dubosc – 1 h 53

It all began on December 21 on a winding road in the Jura mountains. While trying to avoid a bear that appears on the icy road, Michel, a disillusioned Christmas tree seller, violently collides with a car stopped on the shoulder. Assessment? Two deaths and, in the trunk of the Mercedes, 2 million euros in used banknotes, hidden in a sports bag… To this, we will add migrants in transit, sinister traffickers, a hitman as stubborn as a buzzard, and somewhat stupid police officers who only think about going home to celebrate Christmas.

The eternal entertainer of camping beaches gets lost in a rather desolate forest of clichés. The scathing pseudo-thriller with its sharp humor then transforms into a predictable ordeal coupled with a poorly paced vaudeville. Nothing to do, the film constantly hesitates between serious drama and situation comedy, without ever choosing a side. In the end, this walk in the Jura looks like a poorly prepared hike. As for the bear, he would have done better to stay in his mountains. O. D.

Also read
Our review of A Bear in the Jura, a poorly polished black comedy