The Marvels, The Passion of Dodin Bouffant, Five nights at Freddy’s: what’s new at the cinema this week
What to see in theaters
THE EVENT
THE MARVELS ★★☆☆☆
By Nia DaCosta
The essential
The latest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a predictable space opera that is difficult to understand without subscribing to Disney+.
In The Marvels : the three superheroines in the film share the same name and the same source of power, each with their own particular style. The beautiful Christ-like blonde (Brie Larson), the young black astronaut (Teyonah Parris, already in Candyman) and the teenage fangirl (Iman Vellani, heroine of the series Miss Marvel). But we might as well say it straight away: if you haven’t seen these other reflections of the MCU that are the series WandaVision And Miss Marvel, it will be very difficult to even accept the initial principles of The Marvels and get into the film. Although it can be summed up as an adventure of space opera very simple (a great villain wants to save her dying world by using uncool means), never The Marvels fails to assert itself in complete independence. And while showing that the other MCU films are definitely too long, its short duration (1h45) also allows it to be reduced to the dimensions of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation even more cheapwith its cheesy makeup, its sloppy green backgrounds, its pulp exoticism and its lines that are impossible to pronounce seriously.
Sylvestre Picard
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PREMIERE LIKED A LOT
THE PASSION OF DODIN BOUFFANT ★★★★☆
By Tran Anh Hung
Dodin Bouffant makes a young apprentice taste a sauce. She must guess its composition and, with each element found, the sauce recomposes itself on the screen. In one magnificent sequence, Tran Han Hung has just summed up the power of his new film. Dodin Bouffant will be a work on French culture (cooking as a total, supreme art), as much as a portrait of characters (who must learn, love, tame) and a sumptuous staging. Inspired by a novel by Marcel Rouff, the director of The Smell of Green Papaya takes on the figure of this fictional gastronome and combines the epicurean fable, the documentary look at the culinary art and a sotto voce love story. His mastery is that of an image sculptor who captures the slightest emotion and shapes its story in a material made of duration, smells and tastes. He sublimates a still life to which he constantly breathes new life.
Gaël Golhen
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SIMPLE LIKE SYLVAIN ★★★★☆
By Monia Chokri
Sophia is a philosophy teacher. Sylvain is a construction worker. She is this bourgeois woman who is having her second home renovated. He is her carpenter. Their meeting sparks. They begin an adulterous relationship, which becomes official. For him, she leaves everything behind. Her husband, her apartment, her reputation. But can we truly love each other when we are so different? Around them, the whole world seems to be conspiring against them ending up together. Behind the happy couple that Sophia and Sylvain form, the weight of all of our prejudices. Let us say it from the outset, the question has been seen and reviewed. Except that Monia Chokri, with her caustic humor, undertakes to explore a fantasy that has become a cliché. It’s funny, very funny. As funny as his brilliant and insolent first film, My Wife. At Monia Chokri, neuroses are always good.
Emma Poesy
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FIRST TO LIKE
ABBE PIERRE – A LIFE OF FIGHTS ★★★☆☆
By Frédéric Tellier
How does an ordinary person become a myth? This is the main angle of Frédéric Tellier’s film: to show us the construction of the legend of the founder of Emmaüs using scenes that you have never seen on screen. So here is a Trappist brother with a deadly life, a soldier from 1940 who discovered sex in the countryside, a priest smuggler of Jews in the Alps, a popular deputy blazing with rage at the inertia of the government… Impossible to separate the vision of a film of the context in which we see it: in the France of 2023, see Abbé Pierre treat the deputies of France in the 1950s as lazy people in the face of poverty, or contemplate the companions of Emmaüs confronting the police coming to dislodge them with cries of “dirty cops” causes a strange effect. By wanting to tell a myth, Abbé Pierre, a life of struggle is actually a real angry film, which clashes with its calibrated biopic framework.
Sylvestre Picard
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IT’S RUNNING IN SEOUL- COBWEB ★★★☆☆
By Kim Jee-woon
How far can we go to achieve perfection? It is around this question that the delusional person gravitates It’s filming in Seoul which takes us to the heart of the tumult of a movie set in Seoul in the 1970s. Director Kim, neurotic since he failed to regain his former glory, decides in a burst of pure madness to return the final sequences of his next film. Then begins a race against time to perfect his masterpiece. Screams, tears, threats, blows follow, mixing actors with oversized egos, greedy producers and embittered government officials. And when it comes to setting up a sequence shot on France Gall (Wax doll, sound doll), Kim Jee-woon gives us a painting such that The Raft of the Medusa could seem insipid. A real uppercut.
Lucie Chiquer
GOODBYE JULIA ★★★☆☆
By Mohamed Kordofani
An aeronautical engineer by training, Mohamed Kordofani made his remarkable debut as a filmmaker with this first feature film in the form of a variation around the American melodrama, which tells the destiny of two women who are completely opposed, a Sudanese from the north and one from the south, who go finding themselves linked following an unfortunate accident involving a series of fearsome lies… By fully embracing the stereotypes of the confrontation (north and south, poor and rich, Islam and Catholicism), the film draws a heartbreaking portrait of women who borrows from the cinema of Douglas Sirk as well as that of Souleymane Cissé. And at the same time, he deploys an embryonic geopolitical parable on the situation in Sudan, which will allow the public to learn a little more about this relatively unknown conflict in France.
Yohan Haddad
LEAF STONE GUN ★★★☆☆
By Maciek Hamela
“ There are no dreams, only explosions “, says one of the passengers of the van which is transporting Ukrainians fleeing Russian bombings to take refuge in neighboring Poland. This documentary, the first by Polish director Maciek Hamela, takes the form of a road movie and bears witness to the first days of the war wanted by Vladimir Putin. The fights are off-camera (the camera hardly ever leaves the cabin), the distress is displayed in full frame. Men and women follow one another in the back seat, revealing a broken daily life. However, everyone here continues to believe in a possible reconciliation. While this conflict continues to intensify, this film, whose very title reflects its absurdity, nevertheless provides a glimmer of hope within the chaos. Impactful.
Thomas Baura
THROUGH THE WINDOW OR THROUGH THE DOOR ★★★☆☆
By Jean-Pierre Bloc
What do you have left if your employer wants to get rid of you at all costs to satisfy shareholders? This documentary covers the years of struggle of France Telecom employees following the historic wave of suicides of 2009. The film deciphers the mechanisms developed by management to harass employees and force them to leave the company “by the door or by the window” in the words of Didier Lombard, the CEO. The documentary offers a chilling inventory, while showing the fight led by activists and unions for better working conditions and recognition by the courts of the harassment suffered within the company. Despite its conventional device, the film has a citizen vision, involving several participants from different backgrounds (novelists, sociologists, historians) to chronicle the trial.
Elias Zabalia
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FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED
YALLAH GAZA ★★☆☆☆
By Roland Nurier
In Gaza, residents have been living under the blockade imposed by Israel since 2007. In this documentary, Roland Nurier intends to tell the impact on the daily lives of the Palestinians who live there. The director combines testimonies from specialists, professionals involved in the defense of this territory, activists and even a…Palestinian dance teacher. But all without ever contextualizing said speeches. Given the complexity of the subject and the recent tragic and deadly events, this bias leaves one wondering.
Emma Poesy
FIRST DID NOT LIKE
FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S ★☆☆☆☆
By Emma Tammi
We were obviously impatiently awaiting the cinema adaptation of the video game series which, in just two weeks in the United States, has established itself as the biggest hit for a horror film in 2023 with more than $100 million in revenue. And the disappointment far exceeds the expectation. It all starts with an endless opening to introduce the characters and the situation. Mike, haunted by the never-solved disappearance of his little brother, around ten years earlier, who, in order not to lose custody of his 10-year-old sister for whom he is responsible, accepts a position as a night watchman in a restaurant disused which had its heyday in the 80s, thanks to its four animatronic mascots that, lo and behold, Mike will see come to life and move around after midnight. For almost two hours, the game mainly consists of tracking the missing person in this Five nights at Freddy’s : the scenario. Because from the twists and turns that we guess a quarter of an hour in advance to the poorly orchestrated flashbacks to a final stretch that deserves to be included in the pantheon of Malaise TV, everything borders on zero points. Never daring to cross the threshold of slightly gory horror for fear of limiting its audience, Five nights at Freddy’s turns out to be abysmally boring.
Thierry Cheze
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And also
The Germ of Renewalby Andy Anison
Edmond and Lucy’s Winterby François Narboux
Return to Visegradby Julie Biro and Antoine Jaccoud
Spleenby Fabien Carrabin
Repeats
Army of the 12 Monkeysby Terry Gilliam
Delicatessenby Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro
