Angoulême 2023- day 4: Borgo, Cédric Kahn and the Demoustier-Lacoste duo
Daily review of the 16th edition of the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival
Movie of the day: Borgo by Stephane Demoustier
Four years after his remarkable trial film The girl with the bracelet unfortunately passed too unnoticed, Stéphane Demoustier decided to go to prison. And for that, sets sail for Corsica with the heroine of a prison supervisor (Hafsia Herzi, once again remarkable) who has just been appointed to an establishment with an open regime on the Isle of Beauty and who, over the course of the encounters that she does there with various prisoners inside and outside the walls, flirting more and more dangerously with the middle of local banditry. We find here everything that made the success of The girl with the bracelet : a story documented with care but which gives pride of place to the romantic. Doing away with the usual clichés about Corsica without falling into the opposite excess of an embellishment of things, Demoustier signs a film with muted tension where he constantly makes credible and gripping the slow descent into hell of this matron, gradually overwhelmed by the increasingly important services demanded of it. And this thanks to a daring scenario, playing both with the points of view on the situation and the temporality of the actions, in a gesture of impressive fluidity.
Undetermined release
Director of the day: Cédric Kahn for The Goldman Trial
A figure of far-left militancy in the 1970s (and half-brother of Jean-Jacques Goldman), Pierre Goldman was assassinated at only 35 years old, on September 20, 1979, without the perpetrators of this crime ever being found. It was when he discovered about twenty years ago his autobiography (published in 1976), Obscure memories of a Polish Jew born in France, that Cédric Kahn had the idea of devoting a film to him, fascinated both by the incandescence and the troubled personality of the character. And rather than embrace his whole (short) life, he chose to focus on a moment. The highly publicized 1975 trial, where he appeared as accused of four armed robberies – including one that resulted in the deaths of two female pharmacists – when he claimed his innocence in the latter case and was sentenced to imprisonment criminal at first instance. A moment of rocking in his journey. The one where in a few weeks, defended by Georges Kiejman (remarkably camped by Arthur Harari, co-screenwriter of the last Palme d’Or), he will become the icon of a whole section of the intellectual left, that very one (Simone Signoret, Maxime Le Forestier or the Sartre-De Beauvoir couple in the lead) who led an intensive media campaign for a new verdict to take place. And Kahn has here the rich idea of going to the end of his logic. Never to leave the court (except for an opening scene that is masterful in its way of laying the foundations and the stakes for what is to follow), not to get lost in flashbacks of re-enactment of the court which would have necessarily given a clue (or indicated a bias) as to whether or not Goldman was guilty. And in the image ofAnatomy from a fall, he also signs a major trial film by placing us spectators in the uncomfortable position of the juror, torn between constantly contradictory testimonies. And leaving all the room to its main interpreter Arieh Worthalter (the father of Girl), in an interpretation of a tightrope walker balancing on a tightrope, as impressive in the repressed rage as in the explosive expression of his character’s convictions which go far beyond his personal case. Look no further for the favorite for the next César for Best Actor
In theaters September 27
The duo of the day: Anaïs Demoustier-Vincent Lacoste in time to love
Friends in life, Anaïs Demoustier and Vincent Lacoste had already shared the posters of Two sons by Felix Moati and Smoking makes you cough by Quentin Dupieux. In 2022, it was even she who presented him with the César for best supporting role on the Olympia stage, which he obtained for Lost Illusions. In time to love, they camp for more than 20 years, from the Liberation to the 1960s, a waitress in a hotel-restaurant by the sea and a rich and cultivated student, both bearers of buried secrets, which go little by little to little reappear over the course of their turbulent love story. At the helm of this feature film, Katell Quillévéré ventures into romantic melodrama with a capital M and R, never backing down from the emotions it arouses but, conversely, celebrating them, pushing the sliders to the maximum. And relies for this on the slaughter, the accuracy, the finesse of its performers capable of holding their characters without bending through the times and the terrible blows of fate, with a particular work on the precision of the physical game which allows to rediscovering a Lacoste away from its usual job.
In theaters November 29
