Poor Creatures, Like a Prince, Cold Head: What’s new at the cinema this week

What to see in theaters

THE EVENT
POOR CREATURES ★★★☆☆

By Yorgos Lanthimos

The essential

Yorgos Lhasnthimos signs a bizarre tale about a woman-child in search of emancipation. Surely Emma Stone’s greatest role.

A mad scientist brings a young woman (Emma Stone) back to life and implants the brain of the child she was carrying at the time of her suicide. This new being, Bella, thinks and expresses herself like a baby but in an adult body. His progress is first monitored by a tutor, before this creature goes to quench his thirst for knowledge and explore his sexuality by following a charming lawyer across continents. More libertarian than ever, Yórgos Lánthimos creates an existential and deranged fairy tale, which wonders what remains of the individual in our rigid societies. Hilarious although a little repetitive, this precariously balanced quest for female emancipation owes a lot to Emma Stone’s extraordinary and joyfully immodest performance.

François Léger

Read the full review

FIRST TO LIKE

LIKE A PRINCE ★★★☆☆

By Ali Marhyar

There is of course Rocky in this “drama” about transmission. There is also a British “vibe”, this touch of humor which runs through English cinema, even in its most poignant social dramas but accompanied by a mixture of French humor. In the plural, because this is where Ali Marhyar scores points on this first feature: by fluidly mixing the particular styles of Jonathan Cohen or Jonathan Lambert with that of Ahmed Sylla, he always manages to hit the mark. Playing a boxer who became a coach in spite of himself and having to carry out TIG at the Château de Chambord, the actor steps aside to give pride of place to Mallory Wanecque (The worst), ball of energy and comic or dramatic power depending on the evolution of his pretty character. After this role as a budding boxer full of life, we can’t wait to see her again in Love phew by Gilles Lellouche, where his spontaneity promises to hit the mark.

Elodie Bardinet

THERE COOL HEAD ★★★☆☆

By Stéphane Marchetti

Stéphane Marchetti drew directly from the meetings made for his documentary Calais, children of the jungle (2017) – dedicated to underage migrants trying to cross into England – for his first fiction, the plot of which he set on the threshold of another border, between Italy and France. Florence Loiret-Caille is striking in her accuracy. She plays a broke woman who survives thanks to a small cigarette trade, whose daily life changes when she meets an African refugee (Saabo Balde, just as fair) ready to do anything to find her little sister, whom she will help out of humanity and to get your head above water. If the story is too similar to the recent The price of passage so as not to stutter, its inspired production, alternating between hand-held camera and more composed moments, allows the film to make its own voice heard, in a stifling tension until its conclusion, more complex than it seems.

Elodie Bardinet

ANIMAL ★★★☆☆

By Sofia Exarchou

As the summer sun emerges, tourists eager to escape swarm on a small Greek island. The seasonal entertainers of an all-inclusive hotel are busy, with Kalia in the lead. A hotel that has become her cage, and she, a little bird unable to take flight. Out of habit, she has trivialized this frenetic environment which has transformed her body into a hyper-sexualized entertainment machine. An experience highlighted alongside that of Eva, a new recruit who is still dreamy. One will emancipate herself, the other will capitulate, but both will end up apathetic in this gloomy daily life. Exhilaratingly realistic, the almost documentary approach of Sophia Exarchou (whom we discovered in the summer of 2020 with her first feature film Parkappreciated in these columns) transcribes female pain as a collective experience with disturbing veracity.

Lucie Chiquer

KRISHA ET THE MASTER OF THE FOREST ★★★☆☆

By Park Jae-beom

Hey, Korean stop-motion! It’s the story of a young girl who must find a spirit bear to save her mother, while a horrible industrialist wants to chase them from their ancestral lands… A stripped-down micro adventure, a bit static, which deals quite head-on of its dark and complex themes. That said, if you’re under ten years old and don’t know anything about shamanism or capitalist exploitation, it’s a great intro.

Sylvestre Picard

Find these films near you thanks to Première Go

FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED

THE RED ROOMS ★★☆☆☆

By Pascal Plante

After the excellent swimmer Nadia butterfly, Pascal Plante continues his exploration of complex female characters but in thriller mode. Since its two heroines, obsessed with a serial killer, search, during his highly publicized trial, in the depths of the darkweb for the video of one of the killings of his victims that he filmed. Plante not without talent distills an uneasy atmosphere at the limit of the sustainable but gets lost in a scenario that becomes more and more slippery over the course of its overly long two hours.

Thierry Cheze

STELLA, A GERMAN LIFE ★★☆☆☆

By Kilian Riedhof

By playing Stella Goldschlag, Paula Beer tries to follow in the lineage of Fassbinder’s complex heroines. But here, the subversion is swallowed up by a smooth and seamless reconstruction of Nazi Germany. If we never feel the horror and remorse that this Jewish jazz singer felt when she decided to collaborate for her own survival, her laughter during the verdict at her trial serves as a jolt, the kind that freezes the soul. blood.

Nicholas Moreno

PREMIERE DID NOT LIKE

THE PAJAMA TRIP ★☆☆☆☆

By Pascal Thomas

Director for fifty years of cult films such as Don’t cry with your mouth full Or The Zozos, Pascal Thomas rightly imagines his new opus as a tour of the track where a literature teacher on vacation revisits the places of his past and takes inventory of his relationships. Forty-year-old already jaded by his marriage, Victor finds himself without keys and in pajamas after accompanying his wife to the airport. His wandering along the country roads will then push him to rediscover old conquests but also to formulate somewhat narcissistic existential considerations. If this character seems to regret a time when heterosexual relationships were simpler (a segment of the film devoted to surrogacy leaves this out of place), nothing is done to make this male, played by Alexandre Lafaurie, truly endearing. And this trip in pajamas turns out to be soporific rather than invigorating.

Damien Leblanc

And also

Primadonna, by Marta Savina

So close to the sun, by Benjamin Rancoule

The covers

The fault of Voltaire, by Abdel Kechiche

Husbands, by John Cassavetes

Ju Dou, by Zhang Yimou