The Exorcist-Devotion, The Poet's Bride, Consent: what's new at the cinema this week

What to see in theaters

THE EVENT
THE EXORCIST- DEVOTION ★☆☆☆☆

By David Gordon Green

The essential

David Gordon Green magnifies with Friedkin’s seminal film what he had achieved with the Halloween by John Carpenter: reinjecting life (and relevance) into a cinema myth.

A prologue with the scent of voodoo in an “exotic” country, a first big part in the form of a family drama, then a final dose of climax (guess what happens there). With The Exorcist: DevotionDavid Gordon Green religiously follows the structure of William Friedkin’s film (which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year). The most convincing is, by far, this first part where two young girls disappear in the woods. The mystery thickens, the atmosphere is heavy, heavy, and it is carried by a great actor: Leslie Odom Jr, even if he doesn’t have much to play. And that’s about it. The aftermath of The Exorcist dialogued in a much more fascinating way with the original mythology, either by diverting it (Boorman, Blatty) or by reinvesting it (Schrader). Neither diversion nor reinvestment are at work here, only a sequel in the form of a remake which poses as nothing more than a commercial resurrection in the era of franchising.

Sylvestre Picard

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PREMIERE LIKED A LOT

LOST COUNTRY ★★★★☆

By Vladimir Perisic

Stefan is 15 years old in Serbia in 1996. He is a schoolboy and son of the spokesperson for the Serbian government, while the criminal regime of Slobodan Milošević, battered by student demonstrations against the rigging of elections, is living its final hours. Stefan sways. Between mother and country. What to do with yourself? From its overwhelming parents, from its rebellious and fraternal impulses, from the outside world? Illusions are lost, and so is innocence. Through him, Lost country sweeps away a part of Serbian history, and of adolescence. Everything becomes politics: conversations at recess with the helpless or inhibited faces of everyone. It’s beautiful and delicate. Mastered. Each scene is a painting, or a still life. Awarded the Revelation Prize at the Cannes Critics’ Week, Lost country makes adolescence a silent abyss.

Estelle Aubin

FIRST TO LIKE

THE POET’S BRIDE ★★★☆☆

By Yolande Moreau

Ten years after Henry, Yolande Moreau returns to solo directing. And she plays the central role: a woman in love with the arts who, as a waitress in a cafeteria, makes her living mainly from small businesses. A source of income that is no longer enough when she inherits a large family home that she must maintain. Which explains why she decides to take in three tenants, soon joined by a fourth man, her childhood sweetheart whom she hasn’t had for years. The Poet’s Bride tells with infinite empathy, poetry and finesse this strange team who will improvise as picture forgers to meet their needs. Through her writing, Yolande Moreau goes deep into her characters, reveals their contradictions, the limits of this life outside the confines of the nails where utopia regularly crashes into reality. With a joyfully melancholic tone that only resembles her. A film like an enchanted parenthesis.

Thierry Cheze

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PAW PATROL- THE SUPER PATROL- THE MOVIE ★★★☆☆

By Cal Brunker

A (small) meteorite crashes into Adventureville, and the crystals it contains will give the Paw Patrol heroes superpowers (fire, water, telekinesis, etc.). Except that a “scientific weirdo” obsessed with meteorites dreams of seizing them… Following the enormous success of the first film in 2021 (1.4 million admissions in France), we have to make up our minds : we will have a Paw Patrol on the big screen every two years – to the delight of multiplex operators since the “target” of the film, as they say, is families with young children. That said, from the point of view of “animated cinema with toys”, it is technically very nice and the little dachshund Stella, who takes the leading role, even manages to move us. We don’t want to convince anyone: in any case, if you are in the target range, you have already reserved your seats, right?
Sylvestre Picard

LIVING BADLY/ LIVING BADLY ★★★☆☆

By Joao Canijo

Two films like the shot and the reverse of the same story with the same protagonists who can be discovered in any order, constructing a complex puzzle to follow but from which emanates a dull power which ends up sweeping away everything on its passage. The action takes place in a Portuguese hotel, run by women from the same family. Bad Living focuses on them and the harmful relationship that (dis)unites them until it reaches a point of no return when the arrival of the youngest, after the death of her father, awakens resentments buried for years. Live badly is interested in customers who also seem to have chosen vacations to settle their scores openly. It is therefore in stereo that Joao Canijo draws attention to the violence that can result from blood ties, presenting the family as the anti-cocoon, the place of all neuroses, of all cruelty. A style exercise with assumed cerebrality.

Thierry Cheze

LOVE IT WAS NOT ★★★☆☆

By Maya Sarfaty

Women are saviors. They save themselves, save those around them, get saved, etc. Love it wasn’t paints the portrait of a woman, Helena Citron, by other women. Those she saved during World War II and those who saved her. Helena was one of the first women sent to the inferno of Auschwitz in the 1940s. There, she fell in love with an SS officer, Franz Wunsch. He too loved her, helped her. He saved her from the stake, gave her a blanket, rescued her sister (but not her two nephews). The love story between H. and F. is touching and cute. But the documentary moves even more when it recounts the difficult, ambiguous, impossible sisterhood between the camp’s prisoners. Or when, on the screen, many elderly, nicely wrinkled women appear and bear witness. Rare and so sweet.

Estelle Aubin

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FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED

THE CONSENT ★★☆☆☆

By Vanessa Filho

At the beginning of 2020, The consent caused a sensation with its description of the influence suffered in the 1980s by Vanessa Springora (author of the text), who at the age of 13 became the lover of one of Gabriel Matzneff, 35 years older than her. By adapting this poignant story for the cinema, Vanessa Filho emphasizes the physical brutality of this abusive relationship and immerses us in a nightmare atmosphere. While she evacuates several interesting aspects of the book (such as the complex relationship that Vanessa maintains with her absent father), the filmmaker insists on the morbid crudeness of the sexual relations between this teenager and this perverted fifty-year-old played by an astonishing Jean-Paul Rouve. But its shaky staging strays too far from the height of view of the book and does not find the liberating glow of the original text.

Damien Leblanc

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MARIE-LINE AND HER JUDGE ★★☆☆☆

By Jean-Pierre Améris

A cheerful young waitress although in dire straits and a depressed investigating judge for whom she becomes the chauffeur. By adapting Change the direction of rivers by Muriel Magellan, Améris orchestrates a clash of personalities and classes by bringing together two people who should never have crossed paths. To approach, as here, the question of social determinism through the prism of an enveloping fable is to run the risk of quickly falling into sentimentality. And unfortunately, like the book, its characters are from the outset too locked into archetypes for us to believe in their evolution. Améris therefore does not find here the sensitive subtlety of his best film, The emotional anonymous, worrying more about the message than the way of distilling it. But he can count on the interpretation, devoid of any lachrymal ease, and very complicit by Louane and Michel Blanc.

Thierry Cheze

NINA AND THE SECRET OF THE HEDGEHOG ★★☆☆☆

By Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli

Nina, a dreamy little girl, witnesses a harsh reality: her father finds himself unemployed and loses the will to live. Fiery, she decides to rob the factory where loot is allegedly hidden. But contrary to Phantom Boy from the same directors, this thriller for children is not unpleasant, however, weary by its repetitive rhythm. And the hedgehog in all this? It is only of interest in its presence in the title and is of no use to the story. Frustrating.

Lucie Chiquer

THE RAPTURE ★★☆☆☆

By Iris Kaltenbäck

Let us immediately note the relevance and beauty of the Durassian-inspired title, which suggests both a form of beatitude and a violent action aimed at seizing a thing or a being. This duality could well be the very subject of the film, Iris Kaltenbäck’s first feature film, which sees Lydia (Hafsia Herzi), a midwife of exemplary gentleness, caught in a dangerous spiral. We adhere less, however, to the choice of point of view of the story, that of the boyfriend (Alexis Manenti), accompanied by a voice-over supposed to prepare us for the inevitable. Caught in the framework of this alienating narrative structure, the protagonist is as if prevented. Lydia, with her mysteries and her doubts, remains too unfathomable. We end up no longer really following her in this frantic quest in the land of lies.

Thomas Baura

OF THE CONQUEST ★★☆☆☆

By Franssou Taking

Known for her work as an editor on the films of Raymond Depardon, Franssou Prenant directs with Of conquest a pure montage documentary in which neutral voices read the words of Tocqueville and Hugo alongside those of Algerian soldiers, while a contemporary portrait of Algeria emerges on the image. It takes some time to acclimatize to the rhythm of the documentary, and thus appreciate, for example, the superposition of critiques of urban policies dating from the arrival of the French with images of their consequences in present times. In this slightly too busy set, the sound information too often encroaches on the different shots, like the opening sequence where a boat docks in Algiers, and whose breathing cannot be felt because of the Voice off.

Nicholas Moreno

VICENTA B ★★☆☆☆

By Carlos Lechuga

Lucie Chiquer

And also

The Stone Hillshort film program

Expendables 4by Scott Waugh

Mathildeby Olivier Goujon

The covers

Chariots of Fireby Hugh Hudson

Tales and silhouettesby Lotte Reiniger

The Naked Feastby David Cronenberg