The Beast, Green border, Daaaaaali! : What’s new at the cinema this week
What to see in theaters
THE EVENT
THE BEYOU ★★★★☆
By Bertrand Bonello
The essential
With this love story which spans three eras against a science fiction backdrop, Bertrand Bonello creates a fascinating melodrama carried by the sparkling Léa Seydoux.
With this free adaptation of Henry James’ novel The Beast in the Jungle, Bonello signs a flamboyant melodrama with a futuristic air where a great story of thwarted love unfolds over three temporalities. In the year 2044, while Artificial Intelligence dominates the world and suppresses human emotions, Gabrielle must indeed plunge back into her previous lives to get rid of her affects. She then finds herself confronted with a love that spans the ages in the erudite Paris of 1910 then the paranoid Los Angeles of 2014. Bonello miraculously manages to depict three eras with very different atmospheres and tones, while keeping an emotional common thread mixing the fear of loving and the certainty that a catastrophe will happen. A sentimental coherence made possible by the astonishing performance of Léa Seydoux.
Damien Leblanc
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FIRST TO LIKE
GREEN BORDER ★★★☆☆
By Agnieszka Holland
Along with the Mediterranean, the border between Belarus and Poland constitutes the other European gateway for those fleeing poverty in their countries. And it is this area that Agnieszka Holland has decided to tell with her new film, reviled in her country where the far-right Polish Minister of Justice compared it to Nazi propaganda. A reaction which says a lot about the shock caused by the discovery of this fresco which is obviously committed but without falling into Manichaean ease. It follows a Syrian family trying to reach Sweden illegally, confronted by Polish soldiers who treat them worse than animals. Then Holland will zoom out, multiply the points of view, also showing the Poles who provide support to these suffering populations. In doing so, she brings nuance to this question, which is often treated in a binary manner, but without fading behind it. The proof with its black and white production bias, which puts distance between the spectator and the raw violence and thus avoids any sensationalism.
Thierry Cheze
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THE KINGDOM OF KENSUKE ★★★☆☆
By Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry
This adaptation of a novel by Michael Corpurgo (the author of War Horse) features an 11-year-old boy who, taken on a sailing trip around the world by his parents, goes overboard during a storm and finds himself stranded on a small island inhabited by a former Japanese soldier with his only companions orangutans who became his friends. Built on the way in which these two will learn to tame and fraternize, The Kingdom of Kensuke lives like an ecological fable in the heart of nature and its wild animals threatened by unscrupulous human beings against whom the duo will lead a disproportionate fight on paper. Without achieving the mastery of a red turtle, The Kingdom of Kensuke however, avoids any whiny ease, thanks to a scenario which does not shy away from a certain violence and the sober beauty of its animation. At least until its final stretch, which is a little too simplistic compared to everything else.
Thierry Cheze
THE TINY CREATURES ★★★☆☆
By Lucy Izzard
Learn while having fun ! this is the credo of the latest creation from Aardman studios. The tiny creatures of the title are adorable little balls of modeling clay with pairs of eyes. Aimed at very young children, this succession of short episodes lasting a few minutes features this new generation of Barbapapa discovering their environment. Through play and experimentation, these little creatures learn joy, pleasure but also fear, sadness and the importance of friendship. The use of stop-motion, the studio’s signature technique, appears obvious, immediately recalling the childish pleasure of kneading modeling clay, of making and creating from raw material. A perfect introduction to the Aardman universe!
Elias Zabalia
ELAHA ★★★☆☆
By Milena Aboyan
On the eve of her marriage, Elaha, a young Kurdish woman living in Germany, begins a race against time when she decides to have her hymen reconstructed. And what experience is more brutal than that of a woman seeking to reclaim her own body? A body that was never hers, sometimes the father’s property, sometimes the husband’s domain. This questioning of virginity and oppression is here sublimated by an incisive staging: with this frame still very tight on a suffocating Elaha as the ceremony approaches, the spectator becomes an invader of his personal space. A privileged position that backfires: at different moments when Elaha makes questionable choices, she glances at the camera, breaks through the fourth wall, and asks the viewer a fundamental question. “ Who are you to judge? »
Lucie Chiquer
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FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED
DAAAAAALI! ★★☆☆☆
By Quentin Dupieux
Dupieux has a sense of a joke. The efficiency of the one who opens his new film seeing an Edwardian Dali walking in an endless hotel corridor would almost be enough for our happiness. The self-satisfied artist here seeks to join a young journalist and will immediately leave in the other direction once warned that no camera will be there to immortalize the interview. A funny DIY mise-en-abyme then takes place around the representation and the traces it leaves on a painting, a small or large screen, a dream or even on the faces of the multiple actors who play the title role… A almost everywhere, except perhaps in the spectator’s imagination. This is a recurring problem for filmmakers who fail to offer a sensitive vision and are more concerned with the advertising aspect of their own universe.
Thomas Baura
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PREMIERE DID NOT LIKE
RACE FOR GLORY: AUDI VS LANCIA ★☆☆☆☆
By Stefano Mordini
The world of rallying having so far not inspired the big screen, we awaited with curiosity the way in which Stefano Mordini was going to take hold of it, especially since the latter chose to approach his most exciting period (the years 80) through a specific angle: the war between the two manufacturers then kings, Audi and Lancia. And the disappointment goes well beyond the expectation! Firstly because in this world less filmed by TV than F1 and therefore leaving more freedom in the filming of the races, there is not the beginning of an idea of how to film them. Then because, while the period was rich in colorful champions (including the French Michèle Mouton, the only woman in this world of men, here almost), Race for glory locks its characters into worn and boring archetypes (the fake Italian against the strict German). Bottom line: 93 minutes of abysmal boredom.
Thierry Cheze
And also
Cock-a-doodle Doo, by Julien Hervé
The Last Jaguar, by Gilles de Maistre
OperaPortugal 2: Castle Life, by Frank Cimière
The PEsingular tits, short film program
Castelyours and the unloved, by Hélène Ducrocq
The covers
Acetérix- The Secret of the Magic Potion, by Alexandre Astier and Louis Clichy
Acetérix- The Domain of the Gods, by Alexandre Astier and Louis Clichy
Dune, by Denis Villeneuve
The hell of weapons, by Tsui Hark
