Biopic d’Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken, 1h45
Munch by Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken is the first fiction adaptation on the big screen of the life of Edvard Munch, in theaters Wednesday December 20. What emerges is a mixture of introspection and fresh air on the banks of the Oslofjord, of intense feelings, repressed by life’s failures and disillusionment, which evoke a closed house in winter, and of extraordinary paintings which move freely from symbolism to the color of expressionism and which announce spring and renewal. Munch, his life rather than his work. Or rather the original mystery of his unique work which never ceases to surprise with its audacity, its X-ray lucidity and its Nordic spring freshness. The result is a mix of genres, in every sense of the word. Only nature remains, a source of joy in the worst hours. V.D.
Also read: Edvard Munch, an icon revisited by young Norwegian cinema
Documentaire de Frederick Wiseman, 4h
At a time when chefs are stars to whom Netflix devotes documentaries with rather crude themes, worthy of suspense series, it is the opposite that the American Frederick Wiseman is proposing. Faithful to his refined style – absence of voice-over, music and interviews – the prolific documentarian is interested in an institution: the Troisgros family, established in the Loire for more than ninety years. Since last year, the grandson, César, has officially taken over the torch even if the father figure is never far away, whether in the kitchen to give his advice, taste the dishes and sometimes even put his hand in the dough, or visiting cheese or wine producers. It is this relationship under the sign of the transmission of knowledge and power that the film modestly reveals. Caesar sometimes seems annoyed but willingly steps aside in front of his elder brother. Until this scene, in the last quarter of an hour, where Michel confides in a winegrower client about his difficulty in giving up the apron for good. Implicit in this are also illustrated several issues revealing the times: the ever-increasing intolerances (real or presumed) of the clientele with which the cuisine must deal, short circuits or the direct relationship between chefs and producers concerned about sustainability , harassment of staff (discussed during a room team briefing). The only downside is the length of the film: four hours – which risks limiting it to an audience of gourmets when there is a small theater with universal reach here. A.B.
Also read “Menus-Plaisirs. Les Troisgros”: enter a giant of French gastronomy
Drama de Felipe Galvez Haberle, 1h37
Terror does not speak its name. We are talking about civilization. This is genocide. In the Chile of 1901, a rich landowner commissions three men to open a route to the ocean. For this, all means will be good. Let them not hesitate to get rid of recalcitrant natives. There is a Scottish captain, a Texan mercenary and a young half-breed. The first executes at all costs, the second has no scruples, the third remains silent. He is watching. He might not be the most innocent of the bunch. The Settlers is built in chapters, with Godard-style intertitles. We breathe the fresh air of the epic. The director arrives with a bang with this wild, burning western, vibrantly poetic, free and crazy. This thunderous and colorful fresco sometimes focuses on the eye of a horse in close-up, following a flight of seagulls above a pebble beach. The whole thing could be arty, horrifying, old-fashioned. The opposite is happening. Brutal, rough, this multiple story draws the viewer into a shaker of sensations, taking them to the Andes mountain range on the border with Chile. Everyone’s faces betray an immense loneliness. The murders are committed in the mist, like in Shakespeare. Madness is adorned with the trappings of modernity. The screen is filled with images and sounds to bursting with something mythological. Money smells. Pesos smell like crime. These are truths that are not always good to say. In 2023, the immense domain still exists. It belongs to the same family. On the Punta Arenas side, silence is golden. IN.
À lire aussiNotre critique des Colons: Chili con carnage
Documentary by Oury Milshtein, 1h19
The film opens at the Père-Lachaise cemetery, at the grave of its psychoanalyst where Oury Milshtein regularly stops to deliver his confessions. “It continues to do me good and it doesn’t cost me much. » From the first minutes, in this tête-à-tête with a dead man, the tone is set, between intimate introspection and a joyful bravado against fatality carried by Jewish humor à la Woody Allen. A completely hybrid object, this documentary immerses us in the personal history of the director through images from family archives exhumed and reassembled in a puzzle style into a very moving film, like therapy in front of the camera marked by illness and disappearance, at the age of 14 , of Léah, his daughter. It is also the chronicle full of tenderness of a patriarch at the head of a reconstituted tribe (two ex-wives and four children) on transmission and the links maintained with the living as well as with the absent. Family films generally only interest those who appear in them. And yet, Oury Milshtein, by opening the doors of his to us, succeeds in proving us the opposite thanks to a sincerity without artifice, great elegance and a marked sense of self-deprecation. By telling his own story, he touches on something more universal that hits home and is overwhelming. V.B.
À lire aussiNotre critique de Pour mon mariage: un air de famille
Documentary by Luc Jacquet, 1h22
There are films that have the flavor of a book. Where words are so strong that they could do without images. Except that here, they accentuate its beauty. Journey to the South Pole, by Luc Jacquet, is a very personal feature film that the director tells with his words and his voice and in which he puts himself on stage. Exactly thirty years after setting foot for the first time in Antarctica, the man who enjoyed immense success and won the Oscar for best documentary in 2006 with The Emperor’s March returns there to try to explain his addiction to the magnetic continent. In this interior story, he does not immediately place his camera at the South Pole, but shares with us the long road that leads there. From Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn, he shows that reaching this hostile land requires a strong dose of will and a lot of self-sacrifice. Walking his silhouette in the Torres del Paine park, in Chile, he took the opportunity to warn of the ravages of global warming. Struck by the fires, the charred trunks, like statuary ghosts, bear witness to this harsh reality. Yet a fascinating poetry coats the whole. Luc Jacquet follows his desires more than a well-established scenario. No erudition or great speeches in this hour and twenty minutes in terra incognita, but the words of a man who succeeds in sharing his passion and his thoughts on the situation of the planet. F.V.
Also readOur review of Voyage to the South Pole: Luc Jacquet, Antarctic fever
Drama comedy by Taika Waititi, 1h45
A good New Zealander, Taika Waititi doesn’t know much about football. But he knows a little about comedy (Thor and Jojo Rabbit, Oscar for best adapted screenplay in 2020). And the culture of American Samoa, small islands in the Pacific, is not unknown to him. This makes him the ideal director to direct A Dream Team. A “dream story” for any producer in search of a “feel good movie”, that only reality dares to invent. In 2001, the American Samoa football team suffered the worst defeat in World Cup history, beaten 31-0 by Australia – Waititi goes over the goals in rapid succession. And, as the 2014 World Cup approaches, the Samoans have recruited a foreign coach to try to climb the world rankings – they are then dead last. Realistically, the president of the Samoan Federation, who is also a cameraman for local television, restaurant owner, and father of a player who misses all his sliding tackles, asks them only one thing: to score a goal, just one, to regain dignity. Waititi is not clumsy in choreographing a sport that is very difficult to portray on film. But it is his humor and his sense of the opposite that make this beautiful story in crampons pleasant. After the Ted Lasso series, A Dream Team confirms that football and comedy can play together. E.S.
Drama by Wong Kar-wai, 56 minutes.
Four Wong Kar-wai films are being released in theaters: Chungking Express, Happy Together, Fallen Angels and the rare The Hand, a medium-length film from 2004 shot after In the Mood for Love. In Hong Kong in the 1960s, the fascination of a tailor for one of his clients (Gong Li, sublime). Slow motion, violins and eroticism, the quintessence of style. E. S.
Comedy by Erwan Le Duc, 1h31.
Presented at the end of Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival, Erwan le Duc’s second film seduces with the same zany tone as his first (Perdrix). It is also more moving in the way it depicts the relationship between a daddy hen (Nahuel Perez Biscayart) and his daughter ready to leave the nest (Céleste Brunnquell). The absence of any real issue ends up dissipating the charm of this family chronicle. E.S.
