Oppenheimer, Barbie, La Maison du mal: new in cinema this week

What to see in theaters

THE EVENT
OPPENHEIMER ★★★☆☆

By Christopher Nolan

The essential

Less a biopic on the “father of the atomic bomb”, than a case study on an elusive being, Christopher Nolan goes to the end of his logic, until wear.

Puddles of water blurred by a fine rain. Thus begins the new Christopher Nolan. The world vibrates imperceptibly at the feet of a giant, Robert Oppenheimer, ” the father of the atomic bomb », his serious face pierced by two blue eyes with a strange intensity (the magnetic Cillian Murphy) appears from a low angle. A tormented being, plagued by constantly renewed guilt, the man in question having very nearly reduced this humanity to ashes, the filmmaker’s projection is not insane.

We are at the end of the Second World War, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, convinced of having thus “pacified” the world. Oppenheimer, less enthusiastic, prefers to warn Truman that a Cold War is to be feared and that an agreement with the Soviets around nuclear power could avoid it. Sacrilege. This mood breaker, this breaker of the American dream, must be removed as quickly as possible. This is the red thread of Nolan’s film. More than a biopic, a trial film or rather a parody of a trial, around an accused cornered by an FBI report as thick as a mushroom cloud. A summer film of almost three hours on a split and divisive character, as nebulous as his favorite field (quantum physics) can be for the layman. A blockbuster without stunts, voluntarily monotonous because often inaccessible (Oppenheimer remains a mystery) but which, by the grace of an inhabited staging (amazing editing, permanent destructuring of the story, unusual management of the rhythm …) manages all of even to captivate.

Thomas Bauras

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FIRST LOVED

BARBIE ★★★☆☆

By Greta Gerwig

In 2019, we learned that the first film Barbie in live action the story would be written by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. Why had they accepted such a project? What a fly could have stung Warner Bros. and Mattel to entrust it to them? Four years later, Barbie arrives at the cinema and we quickly understand that Greta Gerwig had fun like crazy writing and shooting it. This same pleasure that one takes by viewing it. Her Barbie does not hesitate to set foot in the dish, opposing the fantasy of the Barbie symbol of female emancipation, who reigns supreme over Barbie Land, to the cruelty of the real world, where she rather embodies the symptoms of sexism and capitalism . And he uses this mirror game as a perfect pretext to question our society, like the world of Barbie.

Barbie is not a film but a sum of films. A film about Barbie, a film about Ken, a film about patriarchy and feminism, a film about a complicated relationship between a mother and her daughter. And, let’s not kid ourselves, sometimes a giant advertisement intended to give us merchandising. But above all not a litany of soulless references and nods to Super Mario Bros.. Nor a black hole meta pop way The Great Lego Adventure. Barbie prefers to summon The Wizard of Oz, The Red Slippers And The Demoiselles de Rochefort that Batman And Star Wars !

Edward Orozco

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PERSIAN SHADOWS ★★★☆☆

By Mani Haghighi

Stuck in traffic jams in a city of Tehran drowned in torrential rain, a driving school instructor sees a man who looks like two drops of water to her husband enter a building to commit adultery. Was she dreaming? It will in fact turn out for this couple blunted by several years of marriage that there is indeed another couple formed by a man and a woman having exactly the same features as them but presenting characters opposite to theirs. Developing the theme of the double, Mani Haghighi offers a dizzying reflection on the erosion of feelings. AT the border of the fantastic narrative and the social thriller, it finds a clever way to criticize the Iranian fundamentalist regime, for which there is no other alternative than the belief defined by the power. Led by an exceptional cast, where Navid Mohammadzadeh (Tehran Law) and Taraneh Alidoosti (The customer) each play a dual role, the film successfully paints a powerful picture of the disillusions of contemporary Iran.

Damien LeBlanc

PACKS ★★★☆☆

By Kamal Lazraq

Brilliantly taking over the genre of nocturnal thrillers where a series of unforeseen accidents descend on the characters, Kamal Lazraq’s first feature film surprises with its mystical and bewitching dimension. Set in Casablanca, this very immersive film tells how a father and his son, initially responsible for kidnapping a man, will fight all night to get rid of the body. The family duo, hailing from the city’s poor neighborhoods, encounter a gallery of individuals with hypnotizing faces and struggle as much with superstition (the fear of being damned) as with the violent reality of a criminal universe similar to a endless nightmare. Sometimes amusing with its tragic irony, this macabre tale embodied by an unprofessional cast keeps us in a stunning state of hallucination until the end.

Damien LeBlanc

NAVIGATORS ★★★☆☆

By Noah Teichner

In 1924, Buster Keaton directed The Navigator Cruise, a hilarious comedy that tells the story of a couple performing antics on a boat. The setting of the film, a veritable ship, nevertheless hides a secret: before appearing in this pinnacle of burlesque cinema, it was used for the deportation of 249 anarchists and communist revolutionaries… Noah Teichner captures this gripping story through a demanding documentary, in which he manages to weave a strong link between the texts of two communist revolutionaries, Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, and Keaton’s film images, skillfully diverted thanks to an ingenious use of split-screen, which transforms comic material as a historical component.

Yohan Haddad

OF OUR TIME… ★★★☆☆

By Hong Sang-soo

Here comes Hong Sang-soo again! four months later La Romancière, the film and happy coincidence, the most prolific of korean directors returns to the charge with a new film object that looks like only him. By filming the cross-portraits of an old alcoholic poet and an actress welcoming young admirers to their homes, the filmmaker leaves aside chance encounters to better focus on the notion of transmission, pouring a little of himself into each of these two paternalistic figures dictating to young people the bases of an ideal life. If he does not really leave his comfort zone, the filmmaker nevertheless manages to sublimate reality, transforming the art of speech into abstract poetry, inexpressible to the ear but symbol of a reflection as only he is capable of. to propose.

Yohan Haddad

CAITI BLUES ★★★☆☆

By Justine Harbonnier

It’s the story of a woman who had dreams and gradually learned to put them aside. Terribly ordinary. Universal, even. As a child, Caiti Lord imagined herself as a starlet of music and today finds herself a waitress in a bar lost in the States (in New Mexico). She is 29 years old, serves cherry cocktails, pushes the ditty when necessary, hosts a small neighborhood radio show, walks around with her spleen and her smile, sees her friends, tries to repay her student debt. Especially hope to find the scene. caiti blues, a documentary presented at ACID in Cannes, is a visual gem, perfectly melancholy. Each image – of the house, of the bar, of the faces in the wind – sweeps over another, just as controlled. In the background, the echo of modern times and the oppressive voice of Trump resound. And we understand the blues, necessarily political.

Estelle Aubin

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FIRST TO MODERATELY LOVED

THE HOUSE OF EVIL ★★☆☆☆

By Samuel Bodin

Spotted thanks to the success of his series Marianne, the Frenchman Samuel Bodin signs his first feature film in the United States with this studio film where his beautiful ideas of direction are shattered on the vicissitudes of a scenario which reveals all its keys to reading in the after 20 minutes, dealing once again with this theme of the harassed child, the house as a dwelling place of terror, or even a junk childhood psychology that the character of a disembodied schoolteacher tries to pierce which acts as an unofficial sidekick.

Yohan Haddad

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UNDER THE CARPET ★★☆☆☆

By Camille Japy

A discreet actress with a talent that is too little used in the cinema, Camille Japy goes on to direct with a more singular film than her start – Odile’s birthday party bringing together her husband Jean, their children and their grandchildren – would lead one to believe. Because before all these little people arrive, Jean dies of a heart attack and, in a total denial of reality, Odile decides to hide him under the bed, to keep him quiet and to act as if nothing was not. A rather inflated bias which one wonders at first sight how the director will manage to hold it over 97 minutes but which gives birth to a relevant variation on mourning, in an elegant balance between laughter and tears. Too bad that by wanting to multiply the characters too much, Camille Japy reduces too many to archetypes, like a son-in-law slapped that nothing comes to save.

Thierry Cheze

PAULA ★★☆☆☆

By Angela Ottobah

In a dark forest, a building near a lake harbors a latent drama. Inside, a father and his daughter make a living. Then clash. Well, one more than the other. Little by little, the dad isolates his little girl, drives away mother and friend, cuts out food, destroys her room, knocks down the partitions. If, at the beginning, the tension is rather deaf, it quickly becomes too ostensible and unequivocal, sinking into the dread of incest. The device which was simple, becomes in fine summary.

Estelle Aubin

PREMIERE DIDN’T LIKE

THE ADVANTAGES OF TRAVELING BY TRAIN ★☆☆☆☆

By Aritz Moreno

On a train taking her back from the psychiatric hospital where she has had her husband committed, a publisher meets a doctor who tells her about clinical cases, each more sordid than the next. The beginning of a story like Russian dolls where it will be about pedophilia, snuff movies, humiliations inflicted on women… We perceive the desire for cruel and incorrect black comedy. But by highlighting all its effects, Aritz Moreno misses his film. It is not Ferreri who wants.

Thierry Cheze