Our DVD/Blu-ray selection to watch during the May holidays

Critical From the protean work of Jean Eustache, to “Hitcher”, a fabulous B series from the 1980s, including the latest film by Catherine Breillat or three gems from Shaw Brothers, there is something for everyone.

♦ “Jean Eustache box set”

It took almost half a century, i.e. the appearance and disappearance of the VHS cassette, the emergence of digital technology, then the advent of streaming, to resolve the legal imbroglio now holding the films of Jean Eustache in darkness. And the least we can recognize is that this box set, which looks like a sumptuous mausoleum, lives up to the expectations of moviegoers.

There is no need to reveal the multiple bonuses that accompany each film of the enfant terrible of the New Wave nor to provide the details of a protean work, alternating documentaries, shorts and feature films, drafts and unfinished projects – not to mention the immense ” The Mom and the Whore”, a cathedral film which sits here like a giant diamond on a Cartier jewel.

Rather than attempt an impossible synthesis – we are short of space – and risk a farandole of clichés (the myth of the rebel Eustache, from his sinusoidal career to his suicide in 1981, regularly inspires the press with a heap of wrung out metaphors and little phrases definitive), we prefer to return to his very first film, “On the side of Robinson”, a fabulous wandering of two miserable flirts in a twilight Paris, circumscribed in a maze of bistros and decrepit dance halls. Sexual misery, ranting, fantasies and little pirate manias of the two inseparable people: there floats over the film the surly and warm spirit of Céline (that of “Mort à credit”), re-established on the dark side of the sixties.

◗ “Robinson’s side”, “Santa Claus has blue eyes”, “la Rosière de Pessac 68 and 79”, “Number zero”, “the Mom and the Whore”, “My little lovers”, “A dirty story “. Carlotta. Box set of 7 DVDs or 6 Blu-rays: 79.99 euros.

♦ ” last summer ”

Anatomy of a fall, that of a lawyer on the rails (Léa Drucker, immense), who confesses to her young lover Théo, a rebellious son born from her husband’s first marriage, preferring to throw himself into the void to ward off his fear of vertigo. Released last year in a unanimous concert and deservedly praised, Catherine Breillat’s film finds in this philosophy of letting go a way of clairvoyance, of haughty grace that pays off: cruel but fair, it excludes nothing and no one , neglects nothing, especially not the intoxication of subversion, which is expressed in two shots three movements, nor the cowardice that this causes (the Christmas party excluding Théo, a great moment of muffled terror), even less the unexpected depth of the feelings which metastasize here into the foggy psyche of this blended family.

By unabashedly draping itself in the chic trappings of bourgeois drama (opulent residence, adopted children, vintage Mercedes coupe in the garage), ” last summer “ has the appearance of a paragon work. Rather than dynamiting the genre from within, Breillat would tend, through his disarming sincerity and his cowardly irony, to transcend its aesthetic codes, rules and customs.

◗ French drama by Catherine Breillat (2023). With Léa Drucker, Olivier Rabourdin, Samuel Kircher. 1h44. Pyramid. DVD/Blu-ray: 19.99 euros.

♦ “The Naked Feast”

As David Cronenberg prepares to return to the spotlight at the next Cannes Film Festival (he will present “Les Linceuls” in official competition there, with Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger), Metropolitan is reissuing in a splendid collector’s edition the one of the jewels of his filmography. A pivotal work if ever there was one, “The Naked Feast” was a decisive move upmarket for the Toronto native: with this adaptation of the reputedly unadaptable book by William Burroughs, he definitively extricated himself from the ghetto of fantasy cinema in which he had until then been operating as a small lord to join the big leagues.

The film, however, remains faithful to its very personal logic of hybridization: by repackaging the style and the plot invented by the pope of the Beat generation to his own authorial canons, his “Naked Feast” presents itself as the graft of two brains. William Lee, surreptitiously offbeat double of Burroughs to whom Peter Weller lends his handsome knife-edge face, navigates between hyperrationality and delusions under opiates, two opposing sexualities, a plurality of literary approaches symbolized by these typewriter-insects, fascinating little creative monsters that populate this hypnotic and sophisticated fable.

◗ Canadian fantasy film by David Cronenberg (1992). With Peter Weller, Judy Davis. Metropolitan. 4K Blu-ray collector’s edition: 34.99 euros.

♦ “Shaw Brothers Box Set”

The most famous pearls of Shaw Brothers, the flagship studio of Hong Kong cinema in the 1960s and 70s, have long been favored by a DVD release – we think of “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin », a classic kung-fu film cited extensively by Tarantino in “Kill Bill”.

By bringing together three gems that have so far passed under the radar of publishers in France, Spectrum sifts through the richness of wu xia pianthis kind of adventure mixed with saber fights and chivalrous spirit which made the heyday of the firm, which disappeared in 1985. “The Bells of Death”directed in 1968 by studio veteran Griffin Yueh Feng, is a revenge tale that borrows from the aesthetics of the spaghetti western and Japanese samurai films.

The refreshing “Portrait in Crystal”, which imagines the misdeeds of an evil sculpture, absorbs references to comic books and is overwhelmed by kitsch and colorful special effects, two creative breasts that redefine the genre in the early 1980s. Signed by the legendary Chang Cheh, old master of wu xia pian“Legend of the Fox” merges “Hamlet” and Kurosawa’s “Rashômon” in a gripping plot and supercharged staging.

◗ “The Bells of Death,” by Griffin Yueh Feng (1968); “Portrait in Crystal,” by Hua Shan (1983); “Legend of the Fox,” by Chang Cheh (1980). Spectrum Films. Blu-ray box set: 45 euros.

♦ “The Last Day of Wrath”

Tonino Valerii is somewhat quickly caricatured as Sergio Leone’s eternal minion, as suggested by his past as an assistant director to the master of the spaghetti western and the legend surrounding his most famous film, “My Name is Nobody”, which would like Leone, producer, to have staged it secretly. At least, “the Last Day of Wrath”which Valerii owes only to himself, shows the extent of his potential and the singularity of his style.

The scenario, remarkable for its psychological richness and effectiveness, recounts the moral tension of a young gunslinger (Giuliano Gemma), torn between the contradictory influence of two spiritual masters (one of whom, magnetic and seductive, is played by Lee Van Cleef). Without ever sacrificing action, Valerii skillfully mixes Oedipal conflict, class relations and a waltz of pretenses – the main lines of “My name is Nobody”, whose signature we reevaluate for good. This encourages us to rediscover his work as a director, like this “Texas”, a “Western” variation on the assassination of JFK, enthusiastically praised as a bonus.

◗ Italian Western by Tonino Valerii (1967). With Giuliano Gemma, Lee Van Cleef. Artus Films. DVD/Blu-ray combo: 22.99 euros.

♦ “The Hitcher”

Twenty years since this little gem of a thriller on wheels saw the favor of a digital release. With a luxury edition which contains a superbly restored copy and a thick booklet signed by critic Olivier Père, Sidonis Calysta has concocted a setting as beautiful as the polished images of this variation eighties from Spielberg’s “Duel”, polished by former photographer Robert Harmon. Here, evil has the human face of a Machiavellian hitchhiker, that of the Dutch actor Rutger Hauer, who plays to the full of his fresh Nietzschean robot legend inherited from his role in “Blade Runner”.

Its mixture of bestiality and arrogance electrifies this story of a chase in the desert of the American West, giving it a gothic aura of the most beautiful effect. From sadistic outbreaks to carnage, he crisscrosses this arid territory like a redneck Dracula, an omniscient, sneering and professorial bogeyman, elevating crime to the rank of fine art – the character is all the more frightening as we guess. only guided in his perverse enterprise by the beauty of the gesture. The decrepitude of Rutger Hauer and that of the director, who failed to reissue this stroke of genius, contributed to the black legend of “The Hitcher”.

◗ American thriller by Robert Harmon (1986). With Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell. Sidonis Calysta. 4K Blu-ray collector’s edition: 34.99 euros.