Drame d’Elias Belkeddar, 1h32
We’re crazy. In France, Omar (Reda Kateb) took it for twenty years. He’s an old-fashioned thug, a violent suburban kingpin who plays it off. To escape prison, he retreated to Algiers, with his friend, Roger (Benoît Magimel). Between the two men on the run, who have known each other since childhood, it is life and death. They turn in circles. Caged tigers. Misery may be more beautiful in the sun, but even with money, Omar is bored. Roger tries to protect Omar from himself. The latter finds a respectable job in the factory of a thug who launders his money by producing oriental biscuits. There’s something detached, unique about the way the characters walk beside their pumps. For his first film, Elias Belkeddar, pulled off quite a heist. It borrows from the codes of thriller with a sovereign casualness, multiplies the nods to the princes of the genre. Omar la fraise is an ode to friendship, a caustic stroll through a world of the uprooted, a comical fresco on the wanderings of two ruthless thugs. The bosses of the middle – of the cinema – have to worry: Elias Belkeddar shakes up the codes. B. of S.
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Thriller by Valérie Donzelli, 1h45
We immediately think of the twin sisters of Jacques Demy, whom a magician would have, by the grace of cinema, moved to Brittany. The tribute is obvious. The camera films a cabriolet speeding by the sea, accomplice sisters, a joyous party in a villa on the coast. There’s Rose, the extroverted one, and Blanche, more reserved, coming out of an unhappy affair (Virginie Efira plays both). In this evening, Blanche finds an old comrade, Gregoire Lamoureux (Melvil Poupaud). The French teacher should have been wary. He never knows the author of the tirades that he throws at her all the time to illustrate their budding and already so deep love. The viewer has already long understood that this guy is unclear. Melvil Poupaud composes his character with the faces of the cat in front of Cinderella’s mouse. By turns menacing and flirtatious. Virginie Efira’s face displays the full range of emotions, from total ecstasy to pure terror, without false notes. A bit lost though. From Demy to Clouzot via Truffaut, Valérie Donzelli hesitated too much at the risk of losing her in her forest of totemic filmmakers. F.D.
Fantasy film by Rob Marshall, 2h10
Disney is continuing to adapt its classics of yesteryear in live action. The new version of The Little Mermaid, classic of 1989, has been entrusted to Robb Marshall. The filmmaker had already immersed his cameras in fantastic Antilles populated by mermaids, with Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Halle Bailey embodies a surface-loving island Ariel – a Caribbean kingdom this time run by a mixed family, Bridgerton style. King Triton Javier Bardem reigns in majesty under the ocean. On the other hand, the underwater fauna has not been spoiled by the digital effects; same sinking for the new songs of Lin-Manuel Miranda. Fortunately, the charming original soundtrack by Alan Menken still has all its feathers and carries this too long film like a buoy of comfort. S.C.
Thriller de Christine Molloy et Joe Lawlor, 1h40
Rose, a student in veterinary medicine in Dublin, decides to contact Ellen, her biological mother whom she has not known. She is a successful actress, now based in London. Despite her reluctance to bond with Rose (Ann Skelly, The Nevers), Ellen will eventually reveal the secret of her origins to her. Rose, who has never felt in her place, is the result of a rape. This rupture of omerta plunges the two women into a vertigo between past, future and revenge. Using static shots, heavy silences and chiaroscuros, this film knows how to build a sticky and uneasy atmosphere. Unfortunately, these efforts are undermined by a very predictable scenario and by a progenitor, yet played by the charismatic Aidan Gilles of Game of Thrones, far too spineless. C.J.