Megalopolis, Riverboom, Emmanuelle… The films to see this week

Megalopolis – To have

Science-fiction de Francis Ford Coppola, 2h18

In New Rome, an imaginary city whose skyline resembles Manhattan, Caesar Catilina, an idealistic architect, and Franklyn Cicero, a conservative mayor and demagogue committed to preserving the privileges of an oligarchy, confront each other. A multitude of characters gravitate around them, including the mayor’s daughter, Julia Cicero, who soon falls in love with the charismatic builder. Catilina, to whom Adam Driver lends his anxious candor, has the power to stop time. The viewer leaves Megalopolis like getting off a roller coaster. Staggering, dazed, groggy, fascinated by a flow of images and sounds, between fable and farce, grotesque and sublime, kitsch and flashy, pomp and pop.
A baroque storyteller of an impure tale, a puppeteer drunk on his fictional power, Coppola sometimes gets his threads tangled. The mark of a young 85-year-old director who considers cinematography as a vertigo and not a vestige. E.S.

Also readOur review of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis: a baroque storyteller’s world-film

Riverboom – To have

Documentary by Claude Baechtold, 1h35

This is a unique documentary like we rarely see. The tone is surprising, even disconcerting. But it is amusing. Neither entirely serious nor entirely humorous, Riverboom is the first film by Swiss director Claude Baechtold. Here the viewer is embedded in a rickety car crisscrossing the roads of Afghanistan in 2002 under the constant threat of Taliban snipers. Inside, hidden under the back seat, a terrified thirty-something films two guys discussing expense reports for The Figaro. What are these three nickel-plated Pieds doing in Kabul where the American army has just landed? The first is called Serge Michel. Of Protestant origin, this fearless Swiss reporter has the ambition to tour the territory to verify that the “Pax Americana” has indeed settled in Afghanistan. On a whim, Serge Michel contacts one of his war photographer friends, Paolo Woods, who also intends to fight on the ground. The third thief is called Claude Baechtold. He is the spare part of the trio. Like the other two, he is Swiss. But he is not a journalist. The adventure begins. It will not be short of twists and turns. The discovery of the Afghan people, their joyful children, their smiling old people, the intensive poppy cultivation, the all-powerful warlords, the welcoming villages, the cities teeming with life and energy, all this passes before and behind the window of their dusty car. O.D.

Also readOur review of Riverboom: nickel-plated feet in Afghanistan

Live die be reborn – We can see

Drama by Gaël Morel, 1h49

“A man can’t be stopped,” wrote Albert Camus. The protagonists of Gaël Morel’s new film must not have read Camus. In the effervescence of shady Paris in the early 1990s, they live their youth in all directions. The urges are there. Imperious. Sammy (Théo Christine) discovers ecstasy, emblem of the techno culture of the 1980s, at the same time as his bisexuality. This young and handsome metro driver moves in with the charming Emma (Lou Lampros). They have a baby. The couple moves into a building where Cyril, a fashionable photographer (Victor Belmondo) has his development workshop. Badaboum! While he came to complain about the noise of the work, the artist stops in front of Sammy’s ephebe torso (sprinkled with plaster). His son hides behind him. The touching painting deserves a black and white photo. An idyll is formed. Soon, a “trouple” is born. Emma takes the blow. She is pregnant again. But that is without taking into account the ravages of AIDS which has already been raging for ten years. Sammy’s reckless behavior resurfaces. Emma can’t believe it. The fetus could be affected. To forget, they escape to Sorrento near Naples (we think of Contempt by Godard). Gaël Morel ( At full speed, set sail) films his Parisian chronicle of the AIDS years like a vintage melodrama and documentary. A bit heavy-handed and immodest… He takes the opportunity to settle his scores with the cult sequence of Bad Blood by Carax, where Denis Lavant ran to the music of Modern love Bowie’s Victor Belmondo gives himself a false air of his grandfather, at the time when he lit his cigarettes in Out of breath. Lou Lampros steals the show and even manages to make his dialogues seem starchy, coated in a psycho-sociological discourse so far from reality. The romantic soufflé falls apart in the third part. Boredom sets in. The characters drift apart. The bonds loosen as the glossary of the AIDS years reels off its acronyms: HIV, AZT, PREP, HIV-positive, triple therapy… The hospital and its white ghosts invade the screen. Live die be reborn joins the ranks of 120 beats per minute. We will have definitely understood that men do not stop themselves. Neither do filmmakers like Gaël Morel. O.D.

Motherland – We can see

Horror by Alexandre Aja, 1h42

From Crawl (2019), a clever horror film in which a young woman confronts alligators in a house sinking under the waves in the middle of a hurricane, we were eagerly awaiting the next film by Alexandre Aja, the Frenchman who managed to terrify Hollywood. Here he is back with Motherland. This time, Alexandre Arcady’s son takes Oscar-winning star Halle Berry with him. She’s going to enjoy it. As always with Aja, the plot focuses on a simple and effective concept. A psychotic and possessive mother raises two young children very closely in a wooden house lost in the forest. Hansel and Gretel’s house is perfect for the job. The fantastic tale invites itself into the horror round. This self-sufficient life has its own rules. When you have to go out hunting to replenish your supplies, you attach yourself to ropes. The perimeter is short because “Evil” could well emerge and strike down on this family unit reduced to the essentials. The two brothers are conditioned by their mother. One is smarter than the other. Of course, like flowing water, darkness and doubt will try to infiltrate through the smallest gaps. Who will be the first to untie their rope to cross the mirror? The twists and turns follow one another without weakening. Like the suspense, the horror is palpable, tangible. Halle Berry has made herself ugly on purpose. This square and radical B series keeps you on the edge of your seat until the end. It only lacks a little extra soul to definitively extract it from the genre cinema box. Too bad. O.D.

Emmanuelle – To avoid

Drame d’Audrey Diwan, 1h47

Apparently, Audrey Diwan practices extreme sports. Adapting Emmanuelle Arsan after having attacked Annie Ernaux (The Event), this is a big leap. So, it’s about swapping a Nobel Prize for a railway novel. A bit of colour, a change of scenery. There’s a problem: Just Jaeckin, that horrible macho, has already been there. Here is the heroine (Noémie Merlant) arriving at a luxury hotel where she has to check the quality of the services. The management of the group sent her for this. The task bores her. She sets about it half-heartedly. A client of the palace intrigues her. This engineer never sleeps in his room. The owner of the establishment bites her nails at the idea of ​​being judged. Meanwhile, Noémie Merlant enjoys a quickie with a couple, because we’re modern, aren’t we. The Frenchwoman extends her stay. Her free time pushes her to visit the underworld, to enter smoky gambling dens. Pleasure is a foreign land for her. Noémie Merlant makes a commendable effort not to look like a literature graduate who won a trip to the antipodes on the internet. The staging is brilliant, polished, and deliberately cold. It shines, but remains cold. The dialogue is pompous, which does not mean luminous. We discuss sadness. An escort reads Wuthering Heights. Obviously, the goal was to turn Emmanuelle into a feminist icon. Funny idea. E.N.

Also readEmmanuelle Remake: A Pretentious Feminist Dud