Iron claw, May December, The Last of the Jews: New releases at the cinema this week
What to see in theaters
THE EVENT
IRON CLAW ★★★★★
By Sean Durkin
The essential
Sean Durkin once again explores a family unit devoured from the inside through the tragic journey of siblings of American wrestlers. Carried by a lively staging and a brilliant interpretation, it already has all the makings of a classic.
Sean Durkin here captures the true trajectory of the Von Erich siblings, pushed by a nag and vengeful father to achieve what he had not accomplished (becoming world wrestling champion) and break the supposed curse linked to their name . The story of an emotional disaster, seen through the eyes of Kevin, the older brother on whom the Von Erichs’ hopes initially rest. Body bloated with muscles, resigned face of the tortured, Kevin is a silent monster whose sensitivity is crushed by the spectacle he must offer of himself. Through its staging of elegant classicism, the film remains in the wheel of this lucid anti-hero. The whole advances on a clear line, bathed in a relative torpor retaining as much as possible the outpouring of emotions. The grim reaper is there, constantly prowling, clutching wasted bodies, watching brothers fall. The facts are there, “ in all their ugliness », to which Durkin, in a paradoxical gesture, restores the tragic beauty.
Thomas Baura
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FIRST TO LIKE
MAY DECEMBER ★★★☆☆
By Todd Haynes
Alongside the faithful Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman joins the impressive list of those that the filmmaker has directed. And this time, inspired by the affair of teacher Mary Kay Letourneau, he organizes a duo/duel between an actress who is preparing for the shooting of her next film and the woman she will play on screen, including , years earlier, her love affair with a 13-year-old teenager (who has since become her husband and the father of several of her children) landed her in prison. Filmmaker of heartbreaking melodies, Haynes signs here a film that contrasts with its habits, in a sarcastic and surly atmosphere as desired. This bias creates a distance from its characters and limits the ability of this film to unfold emotionally. But Portman and Julianne Moore deploy themselves there with finesse and intensity, just like their main male partner, Charles Melton.
Thierry Cheze
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THE LAST OF THE JEWS ★★★☆☆
By Noé Debré
In his first feature, Noé Debré tackles the issue of anti-Semitism in the form of a comedy. The story of Bellisha (the revelation Michael Zindel), relaxed and lunar hero, tragic and lucid, dreamer and charmer. This soon-to-be thirty-year-old cohabits with Giselle, his atrabilary mother (Agnès Jaoui), worried about seeing the Jewish community of Sarcelles reduced to nothing. Bellisha plays down what can be, deceives maternal anxiety like so many holes to be filled. Through the journey of this anti-hero, Noé Debré tackles the social and cultural violence that plagues our societies. And to the usual closed circuit, the filmmaker responds with an open-mindedness of real intelligence.
Thomas Baura
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THE COLOR PURPLE ★★★☆☆
By Blitz Bazawule
Adaptation of a Broadway musical, itself adapted from the Spielberg film, which adapted the novel by Alice Walker, There Purple color tells the story of two African-American sisters in the South of the United States, who will be separated for half a century. One will return to the Africa of her origins while the other, married to a violent alcoholic, will survive and forge her own destiny. Beyond its appearance musical gleaming, perfectly honed, There Purple color film is essentially based on the great performances of its cast. Everything is both excessive and very calibrated, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen such an American film – in every sense of the word – on the big screen. And it feels good !
Sylvesbe Picard
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GRACE ★★★☆☆
By Ilya Povolotsky
There is something warm in this makeshift van that crisscrosses the steppes and deserts of deep Russia, yet so cold. On board, a father and his daughter (Maria Lukyanova, magnetic), itinerant projectionists from remote provinces, who have found only silence to carry with them the weight of their bereaved solitudes, punctuated by chance encounters. From the Caucasian winter sun to the arctic shores of the Barents, Ilia Povolotsky’s disenchanted road movie (discovered at the Filmmakers’ Fortnight) becomes a learning story before turning into a psychological drama, with organic photography and contemplative panoramic paintings which reflect the weariness and spleen of these two marginals at the risk that we sometimes find the time long. But it is precisely on the length that the film takes on its full meaning and grabs you and never lets you go.
Lou Hupel
LIVING WITH WOLVES ★★★☆☆
By Jean-Michel Bertrand
After The Valley of the Wolves And Walk with the wolves, Jean-Michel Bertrand continues his exploration of his favorite subject. And achieves a feat: talking about his passion in a dispassionate way, going to meet shepherds, breeders and hunters who have opinions at odds with his own regarding the fate to be reserved for the animal in these mountains where they devour the sheep and let everyone defend their arguments so as not to serve a pre-prepared opinion. An educational document but never academic.
Thierry Cheze
ONE SUMMER AFGHAN ★★★☆☆
By James Ivory and Giles Gardner
Having left for Afghanistan in 1960 to make a documentary, James Ivory shot precious images which had never been shown and which remained in a trunk until 2022, when the filmmaker – who has since become a great director, Oscar winner for Room with a view – got his hands on these archives again. Appearing himself at the age of 94, Ivory then accompanies his Afghan images with personal comments. It is not only a bygone Afghanistan (the one before the Taliban and before the Russian-American occupations) that we discover but also the filmmaker’s own youth in Oregon, who parallels his story and that of Babur, former Mughal emperor with strong ties to Kabul. Punctuated by the beautiful music of Alexandre Desplat and co-directed with Giles Gardner, this journey through time transcribes memories so unique that they resemble a great melancholy dream.
Damien Leblanc
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FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED
CAPTIVES ★★☆☆☆
By Arnaud des Pallières
Captives is the third recent French film to focus on the “hysterics” of the Salpêtrière hospital, after Augustine And The Madwoman’s Ball. Des Pallières imagines the fate of a patient (Mélanie Thierry) who we will understand to have simulated madness to find and save her mother, locked up for years in this prison-like hospital. The film is immediately striking with its chromatic flamboyance and its bias towards playing on the mystery of the off-camera, in order to give a feeling of claustrophobia. But these very assertive aesthetic choices are weighed down by much more conventional aspects: firstly the thriller plot in which Des Pallières does not seem to believe much; then this way of colliding in the credits and in the image the stars (Carole Bouquet, Josiane Balasko, Marina Foïs) and the crowd of supporting roles and anonymous extras, whose faces captured on the fly barely have time to print the retina. Captives seduced by striking but too rare snatches.
Frédéric Foubert
NICKY LARSON- CITANY HUNTER: ANGEL DUST ★★☆☆☆
By Kenji Kodama and Kazuyoshi Takeuchi
Meet the heroines and heroes of Cat’s Eye And City Hunter is not such a curious project: the two mangas have the same creator, Tsukasa Hōjō, and their universes have often crossed paths, in the comics or on the screens (Nicky Larson Private Eyes in 2019). Beyond that, the film does not work for the masses, because of its rather weak and disjointed plot, and its rigid animation. And hearing the voice of the venerable Akira Kamiya still dubbing Ryô Saeba (Nicky Larson in VF) at 77 years old is starting to sound dated.
Sylvesbe Picard
THE CLAY MAN ★★☆☆☆
By Anaïs Tellenne
The one-eyed caretaker of a mansion (Raphaël Thiéry, gripping from start to finish) sees his routine turned upside down by the arrival of the heiress of the place, a depressed woman played by Emmanuelle Devos. If we think about Tony Erdmann in the portrait of this extraordinary man, rejected and feared by others, particularly when he participates without enthusiasm in the sexual fantasies of his mistress, the grain of madness instilled by Maren Ade is missing so that this first feature, a little too academic, succeeds in carrying us away.
Elodie Bardinet
THE CLUB OF MIRACLES ★★☆☆☆
By Thaddeus O’Sullivan
In 1967, four Irish women with damaged private lives take a trip to Lourdes, hoping that a miracle will solve their problems (and, incidentally, that their husbands back at home will manage to cook for themselves). With its pitch smacking of an ode to solidarity and its faces of beloved actresses on the poster (Kathy Bates, Maggie Smith, etc.), The Miracle Club has the air of an English (or Irish, in this case) feel-good movie. But the film is in reality rather feel-bad, shot through with dark affects, telling a not very swinging side of the sixties, between clandestine abortions, ordinary machismo, the weight of rumor and secrecy… Touching stories, to which the staging is muddled by Thaddeus O’Sullivan unfortunately never manages to instill the slightest dynamism. The actresses put on a show and stir things up a bit. But no miracle to be expected in terms of cinema.
Frédéric Foubert
PREMIERE DID NOT LIKE
ANYTHING BUT YOU ★★☆☆☆
By Will Gluck
If the heroes of Everything except you bear the first names (Beatrice and Ben) of the two main characters of A lot of noise for nothingthis is obviously not a coincidence: always, at least since its Easy GirlWill Gluck seeks to revive American regressive comedy (post-Farrelly brothers, post-American Pie) in the ink of Shakespearean comedy. Very good, but Everything except you is miles away from this pretty little program, and light years away from the lightness ofEasy Girl or the cartoon rhythm of Peter Rabbit : a romcom of today, so cautious and anesthetized that it doesn’t provoke much.
Sylvesbe Picard
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HERE BRAZZA ★☆☆☆☆
By Antoine Boutet
In Bordeaux, a “modern” district is slowly emerging. State-of-the-art apartment buildings are replacing an urban wasteland, which served as shelter for some homeless people. Equipped with his camera, director Antoine Boulet lingers on the construction site which is ending. The whole thing could have a societal scope (criticizing the gentrification at work in the Gironde metropolis for example), but the repetition of endless fixed and silent shots gives this film the appearance of an unfinished project.
Emma Poesy
And also
Félix and I, following in the footsteps of the singer of Viens Poupoule, by Luc Benito
My life in paper, by Vida Dena
We are not afraid of ruins, by Yannis Youlountas
Think of me, by Cécile Lateule
A roll of the dice, by Yvan Attal
The covers
The Hound, by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
