What to see in theaters
THE EVENT
THE MALDOROR FILE ★★★☆☆
By Fabrice du Welz
The essentials
Fabrice du Welz freely seizes the Dutroux affair to create an obsessive and rough thriller in the style of Zodiac by David Fincher, notably worn by an immense Sergi Lopez.
For his new film, Fabrice du Welz (Calvary, Inexorable…) chose to take inspiration from one of the darkest child criminal cases that Belgium has known, the Dutroux affair. And this while taking liberties, changing certain facts and above all, names. Dutroux is Dedieu here. It is Sergi Lopez who has the difficult task of donning the clothes of the big bad wolf. With a sullen face devitalized of all humanity, the Spanish actor powerfully invests the rudimentary framework given to him without overplaying the bastards, the character actually being one. Without him, the film would lose its balance, even if it is another field that is explored The Maldoror Filethe very Fincherian one of the investigator obsessed to the bone with tracking. Basically, it is a region devastated by the crisis that Fabrice de Welz films. And it is from this realistic anchoring that the filmmaker draws the telluric force of his brutal social thriller.
Thomas Baurez
Read the full review
PREMIERE LIKED A LOT
I’M STILL THERE ★★★★☆
By Walter Salles
For his first film in thirteen years, Walter Salles creates a heartbreaking work on one of the darkest pages of Brazilian history by recounting the authentic destiny of a family during the military dictatorship. The father, a former deputy committed to the left, is kidnapped by five armed men. His wife begins a desperate search for the truth, endlessly coming up against the wall of bureaucratic silence. And the story then shifts into the Kafkaesque horror of a system where the authorities deny the very existence of their crime. I’m still here escapes the pitfalls of thesis film or sensationalism, elegantly managing to infuse the right dose of romance to make us sensitive to the fate of this tribe. Salles shows how love survives barbarity, and how each gesture of tenderness can become an act of resistance.
Gaël Golhen
Read the full review
THE FOURTH WALL ★★★★☆
The David Oelhoffen
Adapted from the eponymous novel by Sorj Chalandon, this historical drama by David Oelhoffen (Far from men) takes place in 1982 in Lebanon where Georges, a Frenchman, arrives who wishes to direct the play Antigone in the middle of the war. Behind this idealistic-looking scenario, the film is striking with its vision of a destabilized country whose inhabitants nevertheless maintain hope and spirituality. Little by little discovering the political complexity of Lebanon, Georges, played by the intense Laurent Lafitte, will identify with his local theater troupe and detect a great sentimentality there. At first graceful, the staging bifurcates at the time of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon then the massacre of Sabra and Chatila to plunge into a somewhat hasty traumatic violence which nevertheless clearly illustrates the end of illusions. And this poignant story returns, despite itself, to the present situation of the Lebanese people, once again ravaged by the bombings.
Damien Leblanc
FIRST IS SHARED
BABY GIRL ★★★☆/★
The Halina Reijn
POUR
In BabygirlNicole Kidman plays a business manager under pressure, whose life ordered to excess, but deprived of enjoyment, is turned upside down by her meeting with a sexy intern (Harris Dickinson), with whom she will explore the troubled lands of BDSM. Halina Reijn uses a mischievous, gently trashy tone here, to better reveal the puritanical side of the open-space thrillers from which she draws inspiration (Harassment in mind). But behind the state of sexuality after MeToo, there is the moving portrait of a woman who seeks the possibility of healing in sex. The film would not exist without Kidman, phenomenal, intrepid, who here re-discusses entire sections of her film (fromEyes Wide Shut has And man created woman) and reminds us that real movie stars are above all great masos.
Frédéric Foubert
AGAINST
Halina Reijn therefore tells the story of the fall of a control freak business manager who will not go through work (totally hidden) but through sex (displayed), with an eye towards the erotic thrillers of the 80’s and 90’s. Our powerful babygirl in question – cliché warning! – secretly dreams of being dominated by – cliche attention – a young intern with falsely sweet eyes (Harris Dickinson) What exactly is Halina Reijn looking for as everything seems plated in her? We wait in vain for the disturbance that would make everything falter and show something other than Kidman overplaying the actress with her face battered by the scalpel who is now asked to make it a game accessory. That’s where we fit in. the true cruelty of a film that doesn’t know what to do with it.
Thomas Baurez
Read the full review
FIRST TO LIKE
MEMORIES OF A SNAIL ★★★☆☆
They Adam Elliott
Crowned with the highest prize, the Feature Film Crystal, at the last Annecy festival, Memoirs ofa snail is Adam Elliot’s first film since his superb Mary and Max. in 2009. Still with stop motion animation in the form of technical prowess, the Australian filmmaker tells the life of the innocent Grace Pudel, separated from her twin upon the death of their father. He finds himself in a family of bigots, she in a couple who leaves her alone in the evening to go party. But Grace will befriend an eccentric octogenarian who will teach her to love life. Not at all for children (the alcoholic father, the mother who died in childbirth, a judge who touches himself under his desk…), this Dickensian tragicomedy haunted by death finds beauty in strangeness. A poignant coming-of-age tale, as sweet as it is gloomy, which hides a secret anger towards the world.
-François Leger
SPECTATORS! ★★★☆☆
By Arnaud Desplechin
As far removed as he is from this type of film, Arnaud Desplechin also succumbed to the “film about cinema”. Lesson rather than love letter, Spectators! is a hybrid object, composed of fragments of fiction (the Daedalus saga continues!), documentary sequences and others which almost belong to the introductory course in cinematographic art in the first year of school. The result is a more or less coherent and accomplished film (and why wouldn’t it last four hours?), which still holds together by this contagious desire to remember the few truths on which film buffs agree, that is, that is to say the essence of the seventh art. It is necessarily touching to see the filmmaker depict the encounter between Paul Dédalus and cinema through his grandmother. But these passages also remind us that it is in fictional writing that Desplechin excels the most…
Nicolas Moreno
THE RIVER OF THE SENSES ★★★☆☆
De Xue Ma
Five years later, COVID has still not completely deserted cinema screens. In a dormitory town near Beijing, Yang Fan, a married woman, sees her routine disrupted by the pandemic. Gradually, fantasies invade his life and we follow his sexual drift through explicit scenes which, far from any romantic passion, are filmed with the same banality as his daily gestures. Shot in Korea, by an entirely Chinese team, the film oscillates between the frontal romanticism of South Korean productions and the social and theoretical chronicle of Chinese independent cinema, or to be local (and using claimed references) between Rohmer and Bresson. Guided by cinematographer Ash Chen (milky tone, rough frame), The River of the Senses bathed in a foggy atmosphere which reflects the space of this isolated city frozen in the time of COVID. Because if there is a lot of talk about sex, obviously, the bias towards banality, the mechanical repetition of erotic scenes ultimately questions less the impulses of the characters than their social isolation, the apathy which has affected an entire population. And by betraying her husband, by seeking to satisfy her fantasies like those of her boyfriend, the heroine ultimately becomes the subject and the instrument of true liberation.
Pierre Lunn
Find these films near you thanks to Première Go
FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED
WOLF MAN ★★☆☆☆
De Leigh Whannell
It all begins in Oregon, in 1995. A hunter (paramilitary and quite brutal) and his kid have a strange encounter in the woods. Thirty years later, the son, his wife and their daughter return to the scene to empty the house; and, my goodness, you can see clearly what is going to happen. And the mechanical SFX and the hard makeup, effective because visibly designed by people who know their classics (Chris Walas from The Fly a Rick Baker you Werewolf of London are quoted literally), poorly conceal the fact that the mechanics of Wolf Man doesn’t really work. The expected popularity of the B series is very meager: little action, few issues, few monsters, little gore… And the family dynamic is more caricatured than sketched. The director ofUpgrade et Invisible Man therefore rubs shoulders with the myth of the werewolf, without convincing.
Sylvestre Picard
Read the full review
FOR LOVE ★★☆☆☆
The Elise Otzenberger
Sarah (Cécile de France), 40, must juggle her two sons aged 6 and 9 and a husband who is often absent. Burnout looms and one day, the eldest disappears on the beach. Sarah found him many minutes later, soaked and mute. Now obsessed with the contact of water, he thinks he hears extraterrestrials as soon as he dips his head in his bath… Cécile de France carries on her shoulders this drama on the borders of the supernatural, under the obvious influences of Steven Spielberg (era Encounters of the Third Kind et E.T.) and Jeff Nichols (era Take Shelter et Midnight Special). Some sublime visions populate this film which nevertheless struggles to emulate the effect of astonishment produced by its tutelary figures. But For Love here and there a little very personal music is heard, through the touching portrait of this woman cramped in her own life, who finally allows herself to dream.
François Leger
DREAMLAND ★★☆☆☆
By Paul Gourdon, Théophile Moreau, Julie Marchal and Agathe Roussel
Intriguing on paper – compilation of hundreds of stories from young people from all countries who share their dreams, facing the camera as in a kind of globally connected Zoom meeting – this process already served by the multiplication of drone shots à la Yann Arthus-Bertrand leaves on his hunger. Because it only results in the accumulation of individual stories, certainly not uninteresting (the heartbreaking story of a Brazilian rapper…) but without much relief. We are closer to a job interview than to poetic vertigo!
Sylvestre Picard
And also
Bogre, Cathar Christianity in medieval Europe, by Fredo Valla
The Court, by Antharès Bassis
The Extraordinary Adventures of Morph, by Merlin Crossingham
Seven walks with Mark Brown, by Pierre Creton and Vincent Barré
The Recovery
Le Pavillon d’or de Kon Ichikawa, de Kon Ichikawa
Related News :