Anora by Sean Baker, Palme d'Or at Cannes in May 2024, this is the eighth film by the American director and screenwriter, and once again, he takes us to the margins, where the American dream is a pipe dream.
Anora is a trainer in a company where, when she decides, she goes further with clients. What she does with Ivan, a young Russian whom she follows home, for a large bundle of dollars. She then discovers, near Coney Island, a luxury villa. The kid, cute, but totally above ground, is in fact the son of a Russian oligarch, who squanders his money on orgies. On the menu, alcohol, coke and sex.
Anora wants to believe that there can be love with this daddy's boy, but when his father is informed of these affairs, he dispatches a group of henchmen in nickel-plated foot mode, to put things in order. Crazy fights, nocturnal chases, it's a trashy romance led like a thriller, nervous humor and XXL emotions for this fighting young woman. It's about dignity.
Mikey Madison in the lead role is overwhelming, only 25 years old, and has enormous potential.
Flow, it is an animated film for a story that is ultimately quite simple, that of a cat who lives in a place, without human presence, with other animal species, and who is surprised by a flood and a gigantic rise in water levels . Our four-legged feline friend will have to travel to unknown lands to survive, accompanied among others by a dog or a lemur, facing many dangers.
What is both striking and formidable in Flow is that the Latvian director, Gints Zilbalodis, wanted to go completely against the grain of what we see in 90% of animated films Here, no anthropomorphism, the animals are not humanized, they do not speak not, during 1h24 of film.
Same thing for the graphics, which is not like the others. The camera movements are also impressive.
