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THE EVENT
THE APPRENTICE ★★★☆☆
By Ali Abbasi
The essentials
Sebastian Stan plays Donald Trump in his younger years. A surprising biopic, où shines also Jeremy Strong as a lawless mentor.
How did Donald become Trump? Ali Abbasi (The Nights of Mashhad) examined the future American president in the 1970s, then an aspiring real estate entrepreneur but already armed with a ferocious appetite for money and glitz. The idea of this biopic is to tell the origin of the male through his original flaw: a tyrannical father impossible to make proud. A very simple psychological mechanism, but one that Sebastian Stan sells admirably between imitations light of Trump and real freedom of movement. Facing him, Jeremy Strong (Succession) plays Roy Cohn, mentor as much as surrogate dad. The actor is immense in the skin of this crooked lawyer who will be devoured by his creation. A great film is hidden in these scenes of vampire relationships but The Apprentice weakens at each obligatory passage (the construction of the Trump Tower…) and then descends to the level of a – good – HBO TV movie.
François Leger
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PREMIERE LIKED A LOT
THE STORY OF SOULEYMANE ★★★★☆
By Boris Lojkine
For his third feature, Boris Lojkine depicts two decisive days in the life of a Guinean who fled his country, a bicycle deliveryman in the streets of Paris. Forty-eight hours before having an interview which will decide whether his asylum application will be accepted. In 93 minutes without downtime, the film conveys the permanent tension that the latter must face. There is no trace of demonstration or sentimentalism in Lojkine's writing and production. A thousand miles from a sociopolitical melodrama, The Story of Souleymane first and foremost tells the story of a quest for identity. That of a character that Lojkine never takes his eyes off, thus giving him back an existence and by extension a humanity while everything pushes him to escape the gaze of others, all assimilated to a potential threat. A great film played by an immense non-professional actor, Abou Sangaré, himself in search of regularization which was refused to him… a few days after receiving the acting prize from the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes.
Thierry Cheze
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FIRST TO LIKE
THE WILD ROBOT ★★★☆☆
By Chris Sanders
In a futuristic world, an assistance robot ends up on an island far from all civilization. To survive, she begins to imitate what surrounds her. A monster in the eyes of other animals, she nevertheless appears curious and determined, always looking for a task to accomplish. As fate would have it, she finds herself taking a baby bird under her wing and this is her reason for being. Freeing herself from her programming, she discovers within herself something she never suspected existed: a heart. But isn't a sentimental robot defective? Through its gallery of characters as funny as they are endearing, the very poetic The Wild Robot moving without falling into pathos. The comeback of Dreamworks studios in the world of animation with the co-director of Dragons and Croods.
Anthea Claux
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TERRIFY 3 ★★★☆☆
By Damien Leone
In 2016, Damien Leone was making a name for himself in underground horror with Terrifyshot on a shoestring budget. The story of Art, a mute and evil clown, A summit of gory humor paying homage to 80's slashers, followed by a second part in 2023 which turned the knobs up to 11 and made this sadistic mime Marceau an immortal figure between Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger. Terrify 3 swaps the Halloween decor for that of Christmas where Art resurfaces to give the end of year celebrations a special flavor… Amputated arms, genitals cut in two, explosion of kids, brains in the open air: generous in the graphic perversity, Leone signs a new grand-guignolesque farce which is never afraid to push the envelope a little too far. And fans of dirty cinema will delight in the inventiveness of Art's executions, boosted by the great performance of David Howard Thornton under the mask
François Leger
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IN THE SHADOW OF CLAIRVAUX ABBEY ★★★☆☆
By Eric Lebel
What if monks and inmates had more in common than it seems? The similarities are striking: same isolation, same community life, and same housing, since many abbeys have become prisons. This is the case of the Central House of Clairvaux, into which Eric Lebel ventures with this innovative parallel in mind. Neither glorified nor demonized, the prison environment is humanized here by the testimonies of two inmates, Michel and Pierre-Jean, touchingly sincere.
Lucie Chiquer
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FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED
NIKI ★★☆☆☆
By Céline Sallette
Faced with the often fixed codes of biopics, Céline Sallette takes a step aside by recounting only nine years in the life of the painter and sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle, before she became famous. Set from 1952 to 1961, the story highlights Niki's process of liberation from the incest she suffered as a child and shows how her orderly life as a wife and mother constitutes an impasse from which she will have to extricate herself. Through a careful style, Sallette also demonstrates with this first film as director a fascination for her actress Charlotte Le Bon. Having been unable to use the works of Niki de Saint Phalle, the filmmaker focuses here on an intense psychological portrait in which the actress invests herself wholeheartedly. But through bursts of brilliance and cries celebrating the creative impulse, this emancipation through art becomes too systematic and locked down.
Damien Leblanc
SUPER/MAN: THE STORY OF CHRISTOPHER REEVE ★★☆☆☆
By Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui
It's the kind of HBO documentary about an old Hollywood glory that we usually watch streaming at home. The name of Superman in the title convinced Warner to release it in theaters, in order to strike iron a few months before the arrival of a new version of the adventures of the Man of Steel, directed by James Gunn. Superman traces the hours of glory then of pain of Christopher Reeve, pop icon who became quadriplegic following a horse riding accident, who nevertheless continued his career as an actor, while participating in research into spinal cord injuries. The story of the superstar forced to become a superhero “for real” is told through a bunch of archives and home movies, without avoiding the angry subjects, but without the conceptual and emotional power of a Val (on Val Kilmer), which justified the move from the TV box to the movie theater. Good document, then. But not SuperDocu.
Frédéric Foubert
A LOVE ★★☆☆☆
By Isabel Coixet
We discovered Isabel Coixet in 2003 with the moving My life without me. But she has never found that magic since. No more than she does with this new portrait of a woman, a thirty-year-old who retires to a Spanish village where she makes a strange deal with her neighbor, exchanging sexual favors for work. The beginning is promising, the ambiguous harshness of the whole is captivating, but everything falls apart over the course of an overly long story which, by dint of stuttering, causes boredom.
Thierry Cheze
THE NIETZSCHE DOCTORS ★★☆☆☆
By Jorge Leandro Colas
What if medical language created a boundary between doctor and patient? This is what Dr. Esteban Rubinstein, passionately passionate about Nietzche, is trying to demonstrate. At each consultation, the doctor questions his patients about their own way of defining the disease. But, as interesting as this side step may be, we rather have the impression of a convert giving a lesson. And struggling to find direction in the midst of the compilation of exchanges, the documentary leaves a vague place for the mustachioed philosopher.
Bastien Assie
NOT A WORD ★★☆☆☆
By Hanna Slak
When her son, Lars, has an accident at school, Nina, played by Maren Eggert (I'm Your Man), a brilliant conductor, decides to move away from the Conservatory and take her son to their vacation home, to be closer to him. In the explicit title, Not a word evokes the confused silence between a mother and her child, while any attempt at communication is disrupted as much by a ringing telephone as by physical distance. They are alone, close, and yet, a distant proximity separates them. At the center, music, the third invisible character in this conflict, orchestrates each stage of reconciliation which only functions through symbolism – like this boat that we repair, as we hope to reconnect. But all this only works in appearance. We never really get to talk about Lars. The director tells the umpteenth story of a family conflict, monotonous and discordant, where the abscess is not completely broken.
Anthea Claux
THE MAN WITH THE STICK – A CREOLE LEGEND ★★☆☆☆
By Christian Lara
Until the end of his days, Christian Lara filmed Overseas and its inhabitants. He, father of West Indian cinema, who died last year, dusted off the collective imagination of his island and its news stories one last time in his final feature film – The man with the stick, a Creole legend. In 1956, several women were murdered. The killer, the man with the stick said, was never caught. Years later, two women died in the same circumstances. The legend is reborn. It is then appropriate for the inspectors – one of them being played by Luc Saint-Eloy, the filmmaker's beloved actor – to reopen this cold caseand find the culprit. After the Guadeloupean novelist Ernest Pépin, Christian Lara, influenced by Creole culture and its beliefs, became interested in the case and explored one of its avenues. But on the border between detective film and fantasy, the whole thing is disjointed, the dialogues artificial; and the result – far from bewitching.
Anthea Claux
ON EARTH AS IN HEAVEN ★★☆☆☆
By Nathalie Saint-Pierre
The heroine of this coming-of-age story, inspired by a true story, runs away from the Christian sect where she was raised to find her sister, who has just disappeared. In Montreal, she meets her funny aunt and will emancipate herself, question her beliefs, find her way. The production is a little summary, the scenario like Unorthodox tinged with clichés. But Nathalie Saint-Pierre observes her endearing characters with such tenderness that the charm operates despite everything.
Emma Poesy
FIRST DID NOT LIKE
LEE MILLER ★☆☆☆☆
By Ellen Kuras
Ellen Kuras here signs her first feature-length fiction film. A renowned cinematographer, she created the lighting so characteristic ofEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind making a connection with Kate Winslet. She perhaps said to herself that she was best placed to tell the story of the life of a woman of images, in this case Lee Miller, muse of Man Ray, one of the first successful war photojournalists. to impose its gaze during the Second World War. Unfortunately this clumsy biopic wallows in all the traps of the exercise with its little Wikipedia memo as a scenario. As for the flashback structure in the “I remember” mode, this is no longer decently possible. Winslet, also a producer, puts far too much good will into it, little helped, it is true, by the accusatory dialogues and dubious or even vulgar aesthetic choices. A shame for this woman who has searched all her life for the right image.
Thomas Baura
And also
My little Halloween, short film program
My hero Academia: you're next, by Tensai Okamura
Resumption
The Black of…, by Ousmane Sembène