A single price of €5 to discover the films of the moment in French cinemas. Like every year since 1985, cinemas are celebrating in June. For this 38th edition, professionals in the sector hope to win back the public after having experienced the lowest level of attendance in cinemas since 1990 last year. There are certainly many questions about the future of cinema, but some highly anticipated blockbusters and beautiful auteur films could help put the sector back on its feet.
On the program for this edition, American blockbusters, animated films and dramatic comedies from elsewhere. Our selection.
Drama by Koji Fukada, 2h04
Jiro and Taeko lived together in their functional, cramped apartment, along with Keita, Taeko’s son from a previous union. Everything was going well, even if Jiro’s parents were not thrilled with this marriage to a divorced woman. Life flowed smoothly. The gifted kid was champion of Othello, a strategy game. Jiro hadn’t told Taeko about the girl he left for her. He runs the local social service. She works for an NGO that distributes meals to the homeless. Quiet days in Japan. This tranquility does not last. During a birthday, the child who was playing with a plastic airplane knocks himself out and drowns in the bathtub that we had forgotten to empty. It only takes a few seconds. Life changes. Will the couple hold their own in the face of adversity? Love Life is silent tragedy. Guilt nests. The pain is there. It permeates every moment, without cries, without too many tears. Together, the loneliness is more bearable. Moments of grace arise, these building lights that all come on at the same time, a wedding in the pouring rain. Love Life is made up of these little touches, these delicate interludes, to music à la Michael Nyman. IN.
À lire aussiNotre critique de Love Life: tragédie rohmérienne
Dramatic comedy by Nanni Moretti, 1h35
There is no age to be an old fart. Nanni Moretti started young, at a time when we weren’t talking about “boomer”. The actor and filmmaker has always looked at the world with an uncompromising and heartbroken nostalgia. But his melancholy has always given way to irony, and sometimes to a jubilation which gives his cinema a paradoxical and exhilarating vitality. Towards a radiant future is in this one of his most beautiful films, with sovereign intranquillity. Moretti is staged in the guise of a renowned filmmaker, Giovanni. When he is not riding an electric scooter, he is filming a film set in 1956, when the Soviets invade Budapest. Its scenario imagines a Hungarian circus passing through Rome. Through this marquee populated by elephants and acrobats, Giovanni claims to tell the story of the bankruptcy of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), subservient to the USSR. Its main actors may highlight the love story of their characters, Giovanni swears by politics. He doesn’t listen to his wife Paola (Margherita Buy), who is also his producer and who can’t find the courage to leave him, any more than their daughter, who flirts with the unglamorous sixty-year-old Polish ambassador. Everything scampers off. Between precision of the frame and fluidity of the editing, his staging binds the strata of the story, softens the breaks in tone, with a lightness that is not self-evident. The end of love, politics and cinema converge here in a final parade that brings together its troupe. As if the only collective Moretti still believed in was a film crew. E.S.
Adventure of James Mangold, 2h34
Fifteen years after an unloved fourth installment, Harrison Ford puts on his leather jacket again for a final lap, under the watchful eye of James Mangold (LeMans66, Logan, Copland…). A dashing octogenarian, he immediately dispels our doubts about the captain’s age. While the intro features a digitally rejuvenated “Indy,” the plot is set well in 1969, as Indiana retired with personal troubles. His past resurfaces thanks to his goddaughter, embodied by the petulant Phoebe Waller-Bridge, a devious heroine who will galvanize our tired hero, while blowing a great wind of femininity and modernity on this fifth adventure. Reminiscences of Tintin accompany the intrigue, led drum beating. Object of the quest, Archimedes’ Dial of Destiny is a perfect Hitchcockian “McGuffin”, which leads Indiana Jones in search of lost time. It’s almost Proustian. In addition, this last part offers viewers a very moving finale. The whip of emotion cracks. Indiana Jones “ for ever”…O.D
Drame d’Ira Sachs, 1h31
Tomas is a director. He is played by Franz Rogowski, a German actor seen with Michael Haneke and Christian Petzold. The young man is in a relationship with Martin, played by Ben Whishaw, an elegant and eclectic British actor. At the end of filming party for his new film, Tomas dances and sleeps with Agathe, a schoolteacher (Adèle Exarchopoulos, who needs no introduction). He tells Martin the next morning. He liked to make love with a woman. The affair turns into a story. Tomas leaves Martin to move in with Agathe. Martin consoles himself in the arms of another boy. Agathe becomes pregnant. Agathe’s parents don’t take kindly to their daughter’s romance with a man who was in a relationship with another man. Tomas still has a crush on Martin. He hesitates, does not want or does not know how to choose. We don’t know if Ira Sachs has read René Girard, but Passages illustrates quite well the triangular and mimetic desire theorized by the author of La Violence et le Sacré. He doesn’t try to cut corners. He shows the cruelty of feelings, the rawness of bodies. He films on the bone, without breathing, in the privacy of apartments. Each scene redistributes the cards, keeps the spectator on the alert. Each character, male or female, fights with their weapons. Jealousy circulates between beings. If the plot is agreed, the story is never predictable. Passages is almost a thriller. E.S.
À lire aussiNotre critique de Passages: la passion selon Ira Sachs
Historical film by Petr Vaclav, 2h10
A bit of lack of culture is not discouraged. Apart from a few sharp music lovers, who knew Josef Myslivecek? The composer (1737-1781) had sunk into oblivion. It must be said that he has an unpronounceable name and that must not have helped him to be remembered. Petr Vaclav redresses this injustice with an ample, rich and classic biopic. Il Boemo is a success. It will delight amateurs, will delight moviegoers. The actor (Vojtech Dyk) is a tall, soft blond, lookalike of Ryan O’Neal in Barry Lyndon (Kubrick is asked to leave these lines as soon as possible). Of course, critics, always lazy, compared it to Amadeus, a drumming model of the genre. At least there’s not the insufferable Tom Hulce in there. The real star here is the music. IN.
Also read Boemo, the flamboyant portrait of the Czech Mozart
Comedy drama by Wes Anderson, 1h46
Jones Hall, in the costume of Augie Steenbeck, war photographer with beard and pipe, arrives in Asteroid City, an archetypal town with a “dinner”, gas station, telephone booth and motel. Augie is the father of three children to whom he has not yet admitted that their mother died – his ashes are from the trip in a Tupperware. He is on his way to visit his stepfather (Tom Hanks, pensioner with a mustache) and try to reconcile with him. Asteroid Day is an opportunity for his son to participate in a competition for Young Astronomers and Space Cadets. The argument allows Wes Anderson to enshrine microfiction and scroll through Hollywood stars (Scarlett Johansson, Matt Dillon, Steve Carell, Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody…). More than political satire, Asteroid City appeals to the unbridled fantasy of Wes Anderson. The film is teeming with ideas and gags, a profusion to which the score by Alexandre Desplat, superbly melancholy, gives a coherence and a “slow burn” rhythm, close to the comedies of Blake Edwards. E.S.
À lire aussiNotre critique d’Asteroid City: désert de famille
Animated film by Peter Sohn, 1h42
It is usually good to live in Element City, this staggering metropolis where beings of fire, the Flamboyants, cohabit with the Aquatics made of water, as well as two other tribes, those made of earth and air. It is here that resides Flam (voiced by Adèle Exarchopoulos), an intrepid and lively young woman, with a strong character, who must take over the shop from her parents, who have sacrificed everything for her. A water leak in the basement of the store will cause Flam to meet Flack (voiced by Vincent Lacoste), a sentimental and amusing boy, rather a follower. The attraction these two feel will challenge Flam’s deep beliefs about the world they live in. On this solid canvas, which happily mixes the conceptual aspect of Inside Out with the more urban one of Zootopia, director Peter Sohn knits a thrilling romantic comedy. This is a very good Pixar, entertaining and deep. O.D.
