Winner of the Youth Prize in Cannes, in the Un certain regard category, of the Valois de Diamant and that of students, Twenty Gods is a nugget that hits the spectators right in the heart. Louise Courvoisier, the young director of this first feature film (she started it at 27), was not necessarily predestined for the 7th art: « My desire for cinema was born somewhat by chance. »
After a cinema option, she found herself at the Ciné Fabrique (National School of Cinema) in Lyon. Noted for its short Hand by handshe goes on to draw inspiration from the people she has known since childhood in her native Jura: “Totone and his friends are a bit like my village 'colleagues'. Most of the time, they left their studies early to work with their parents on farms. […] I wanted to film this youth who are rarely represented in the cinema, who start life with less luck than many others, and to create a positive and nuanced “inside” portrait of them. All in the county universe! »
Casting sauvage
To interpret this youth, she then launched a wild casting call in her region and only called on non-professional actors. She discovers and above all convinces Clément Faveau to play Totone, Luna Garret for the role of her little sister or even Maïwène Barthélemy for that of Marie-Lise, her lover.
If everyone is also incredibly fair, the director has a lot to do with it: « Directing actors fascinates me. I was inspired by who they were, their ways of speaking, their looks, their mannerisms […] As the rehearsals progressed, I rewrote the scenes so that they sounded as accurate as possible and so that the actors could feel ready when they arrived on set. »
As much to save money as to reassure herself, the director surrounds herself with people she knows well. Thus, his brother Pablo and his sister Ella are in charge of the sets while another of his brothers and his mother sign the music.
She also met her co-writer Théo Abadie and her editor, Sarah Grosset, at Ciné Fabrique: “I like working with family and I need to be surrounded by trustworthy people, with whom I can take all the time I need to find what I am looking for. » In this particularly successful and touching fiction, most of the scenes ring truer than life.
Territorial film
“My taste for details guides the writing of my characters and situations. I like things to seem like nothing, that the elements all have a reason to exist without overemphasizing them and without falling into a chronicle. I had a real desire for fiction anchored in documented reality. For me it was about telling my story within a realistic universe,” explains Louise Courvoisier. A truth that is anchored in its territory: « I come from the Jura and I wanted to talk about this region which is relatively underrepresented and to tell the story of this rural youth that we don't often see and that we try to hide. » The director wanted, on the contrary, to highlight them. It is also this territory which led him to retain the title Twenty Gods : « I chose it the day I discovered how this expression, which is so common in my region, was spelled. I really like this reference to the gods at the heart of the rural world! »
“Emilia Perez” shines on the European scene
With his musical comedy tinged with drug trafficking, director Jacques Audiard achieved a grand slam during the European Film Awards ceremony held last Saturday in Lucerne, Switzerland: best film, best director, best screenplay, with her accomplice Thomas Bidegain and best actress for Karla Sofía Gascón. This success relaunches Emilia Perez in the race for the Oscars even though it seemed to have been shunned, for the moment, by several American critics' organizations. The director of Un Prophète declared: “We are so lucky to make cinema in Europe, especially in France where we benefit from essential support like the CNC and the Île-de-France region.” Indeed, after the triumph by Justine Triet last year, French cinema once again distinguished itself during this new ceremony. Abou Sangaré received the prize for best actor for The Story of Souleymane while the best animated film was awarded to Flow by Gints Zilbalodis. The Substance by Coralie Fargeat won two technical prizes. Matthijs Wouter Knol, director of the European Film Academy, who has just appointed Juliette Binoche as honorary president, confirmed this trend in Le Figaro: “This 37th edition of the European Film Awards has a French flavor and celebrates the diversity of your cinema. This reflects the French cultural exception and the unique way in which your country's institutions support the 7th art.
Still showing
Women on the balcony
By Noémie Merlant. 1:43 a.m.
” Three women, in an apartment in Marseille in the middle of a heatwave. Opposite, their mysterious neighbor, object of all fantasies. They find themselves stuck in a terrifying and delirious affair with, as their only quest, their freedom. ” After a first long -film in 2022 – Mi iubita mon amour – actress Noémie Merlant (Portrait of the Young Girl on Fire) goes behind the camera for the second time. Accompanied, this time, on the screenplay by Céline Sciamma, she launches into a feminist film which is as suspicious of Almodovar as gore films or revenge movies à la Park Chan-Wook. Destabilizing.
A fanfare
By Emmanuel Courcol. 1:44 a.m.
” Thibaut, an internationally renowned conductor, learns that he has been adopted and discovers the existence of a brother, Jimmy, a school canteen employee, who plays the trombone in a brass band in the North. Apparently, everything separates them , except the love of music…”
After Un Triomphe in 2021, Emmanuel Courcol seems to have made the “feel-good movie” his favorite genre. He has the gift of making spectators laugh as well as cry, not hesitating to bring out the violins if necessary. That's good, we find them here in the orchestra led by Benjamin Lavernhe (bordering on histrionics) but not in the fanfare of his brother Pierre Lottin. Two worlds that everything separates but that good feelings bring together.
Limonov, la ballade
De Kirill Serebrennikov. 2 h 13
“Revolutionary activist, dandy, thug, butler or homeless, he was at the same time an angry and bellicose poet, a political agitator and the novelist of his own greatness. The life of Edouard Limonov, like a trail of sulfur, is a stroll through the bustling streets of Moscow and the skyscrapers of New York, from the alleys of Paris to the heart of the jails of Siberia “The cursed child of Russian cinema is back. After Leto, Petrov's Fever and Tchaikovsky's Wife, Kirill Serebrennikov continues to kick the world's cinematic anthill. However, his staged antics sometimes take precedence here over the story and end up tiring us. What remains is a visually ambitious film and the extraordinary performance of actor Ben Whishaw.
France
