What are we watching this weekend? Pierre Niney at Gondry, Tapie and the best role of Jon Hamm

Cinema, streaming, VOD, TV… Find advice from the editorial staff every Friday.

The film in theaters: The Book of Solutions

After an eight-year hiatus from the big screen, Michel Gondry returns with a comedy where Pierre Niney plays his alter ego, Marc. A whimsical filmmaker who leaves to make his latest film in the Cévennes to get away from his producers, but finds himself plunged into the chaos of his incessant ideas. A rather hilarious self-portrait of a bipolar person who makes all his colleagues sweat, a hyperactive and capricious kid who would like everyone to die as quickly as him. Very funny (Niney’s comic dejection is remarkable), very touching, very Gondry.

The Book of Solutionscurrently in cinemas.

What’s new at the cinema this week

The nugget to catch up on: Confess, Fletch on MyCanal

Jon “Dron Draper” Hamm’s Best Role Since Mad Men was released in France, directly on VOD last January, which means that it went largely unnoticed here. While it has been available on MyCanal for a few days, a reminder is in order. Directed by Greg Mottola (SuperSevere), Confess, Fletch is a brilliant zany comedy where Hamm plays a gonzo and faux-private investigative journalist investigating a murder in which he himself is the suspect. Fletch is a wanker, a half-stupid, half-smart guy, who doesn’t embarrass himself in any way (he walks around barefoot) and enjoys taking on false identities to question people. A golden role for the actor, surrounded by his crazy supporting roles (Lorenza Izzo, Marcia Gay Harden, Kyle MacLachlan, Annie Mumolo…).

Watch Avoue, Fletch on MyCanal and on VOD on Première Max

The UFO: Rotting in the Sun on MUBI

Funny film, in every sense of the word, this new feature from the Chilean director revealed in 2010 with Les Vieux Chats before shooting Magic Magic and Crystal Fairy then disappearing from the radar. A very crude and crude self-portrait, doped with self-deprecation, as a depressive gay filmmaker who reluctantly agrees to collaborate with a famous influencer whom he saved from drowning on a gay nudist beach in Mexico! Both a gay boulevard comedy and an acidic portrait of its community against a backdrop of acute paranoia, Rotting in the Sun turns into suspense following a totally unexpected twist. It is disconcerting as much by its story as by its execution (the incessant camera movements at the beginning can be annoying). But this is precisely what hooks us during these 110 minutes dominated by a rare ferocity in the writing of its characters who are anything but cutesy.

Watch Rotting in the Sun on MUBI (7-day free trial offer)

Series : Tapie on Netflix

From budding singer of the Sixites to Minister of the Republic, from excited entrepreneur to captain of industry, from boss of OM in the dock, the Bernard Tapie myth is told to us in a grandiose way in this new mini-series event from Netflix. More than a biopic on a 20th Century celebrity, Tapie is a chronicle of success, a fable of the social rise of the Republic, a biting and moving painting of a character larger than life, who refused his condition. A fictionalized fable but which nonetheless remains edifying and fascinating, largely thanks to the spectacular incarnation of Laurent Lafitte on a mission.

The classic : Double Bodysuit on France.tv

Just after the box Scarface (1983), Brian de Palma embarks on this baroque thriller with assumed Hitchcockian accents. Melanie Griffith – daughter of Tippi “The Birds” Hedren – plays a porn actress who turns the head of Jake (the dazzling Graig Wasson), a second-rate actor. The latter, like James Stewart in Rear window, observes his neighborhood through the telescope. Soon witnessing an atrocious crime, Jake falls into a world full of pretense. De Palma creates here a labyrinthine dance of death where the representation becomes monstrous and questionable. Like this house in the shape of a flying saucer placed in the air of an unreal Los Angeles, the real world appears unattainable. Impure work by nature, Double Bodysuit – sound variation Impulses made four years earlier – disconcerted the general public and critics. However, it is one of Brian de Palma’s peaks. And then, let’s remember that it’s the favorite film of Patrick Bateman, the hero ofAmerican Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, who boasts of having rented thirty-seven in his video store. Just for that…

Watch Body Double on France.tv (also available on DVD from Potemkine)