The Substance, Three Friends, At Work! : what's new at the cinema this week

What to see in theaters

THE EVENT
THE SUBSTANCE ★★★★☆

By Coralie Fargeat

The essentials

Coralie Fargeat signs a die-hard and ultra-referenced body horror film that dynamites everything in its path. Starting with its two stars: Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. Enjoyable. Screenplay Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Left Cannes with a Screenplay Prize, The Substance features a “fifties” (Demi Moore), ex-movie star turned star of a television aerobics show that the producer of the program decides to fire her overnight to cast a much younger woman (Margaret Qualley ). At the same time, the outcast receives a shady proposition that she cannot refuse: inject herself with a strange substance that will allow her to generate a sort of double, an improved version of herself, young and pretty, with her own personality. . But every seven days, she will have to regain possession of her old body to avoid an irreversible deterioration in her appearance. We know how Faustian pacts end. Very bad, in general. And the two beings thus split will very quickly engage in a war at a distance. But the good idea is to tell this war from a single, physically split character. This duality allows the story to go beyond its simple political aim (the worn-to-the-bone refrain of a society of spectacle and its mirages, triumphant feminism…) to confront a purely organic challenge of cinematic representation . And we come out both groggy and excited.

Thomas Baura

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PREMIERE LIKED A LOT

THREE FRIENDS ★★★★☆

By Emmanuel Mouret

Speech for Mouret is not a simple accessory, it is even the reason for his films. Above all, she physically and psychologically dresses characters held prisoner by fully formulated moral dilemmas. Art of rhetoric where chance cannot be accidental. In Three friendsthis word creates direct tension between the protagonists. Joan (India Hair) also hesitates to confide in Alice (Camille Cottin) about the erosion of her feelings towards her companion. To say is to embody things and therefore to admit that they exist. But Joan's heart cannot lie, whereas Alice's adapts to circumstances. In these Three friendseverything reflects on the surface of the lips, of the bodies and therefore of the frame. Words fill and suffocate space. Three friends is intended to be a variation on the romantic discourse where each person crosses swords with their own conscience. The fluid and slender staging sets a blistering pace. Stimulating.

Thomas Baura

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FIRST TO LIKE

THE NEVENKA CASE ★★★☆☆

By Iciar Bollain

It is a case that has had a profound impact on Spanish society. The story of Nevenka Fernández, elected at the end of the 90s at the age of 25 as a municipal councilor under Ismael Alvarez, a very charismatic mayor, with whom, after a brief affair, she will experience hell against a backdrop of harassment. Her word is then worth, in this first case of #MeToo politics in the country, much less than that of the city councilor. By taking up this case, Iciar Bollain intends to give voice again to the victim who at the time had a majority of public opinion against her. And this is why fiction – which allows us to live this story with it – seems in fact the best way to get to grips with it, showing moments which could not have existed in documentary, due to lack of archives. And the assumed programmatic aspect of the film constitutes another major asset, reminding us that in these cases, the same causes always produce the same effects at the same moments under the gaze of those who think that the female victims were looking for it. A relentless and chilling film.

Thierry Cheze

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AT ALL SPACE ★★★☆☆

By Lucas Bernard

It all started with love at first sight, during a stopover, from a steward to a tactical submarine officer. A budding idyll brutally interrupted by the departure on a mission of the young woman whom her suitor will begin to follow… boarding the submarine, necessarily forbidden to civilians, for the start of a tour of the underwater world in mud closed. For 90 minutes, the adventures follow one another without any downtime, ignoring all realism. To play the absurd to this extent is obviously to take the risk of leaving people at the dock, of not always dosing correctly. At full speed – over which hovers the shadow of The Man from Rio – is not free from these dross but nothing hinders its thunderous rhythm which suits Eye Haïdara and Pio Marmaï perfectly, whose very dog-cat complicity bursts through the screen.

Thierry Cheze

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TO WORK! ★★★☆☆

By François Ruffin and Gilles Perret

This comedy-documentary starts from a simple principle, even a little raunchy, which has repercussions on its somewhat laborious beginning. Highly publicized MP-filmmaker, François Ruffin found himself in 2023 on the set of the show The Big Mouths facing the lawyer and columnist Sarah Saldmann who made insulting remarks towards precarious workers and workers living on minimum wage and suggested that she try the experience of living on 1,300 euros per month. The film was born from there and the camera follows for several days Sarah Saldmann carrying out difficult jobs in the field and under the amused eye of Ruffin as a carer, fish cutter… But beyond this media-political device, Above all, the filmmakers give voice to many people in social distress who confide their upsetting existential journeys. And Get to work! manages to become, through precision and listening quality, a powerful ode to invisible heroes.

Damien Leblanc

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THE COMMANDER'S SHADOW ★★★☆☆

By Daniel Völker

The principle of The Commander's Shadow is fascinating: talking to the son and grandson of Rudolf Höss, the commander of Auschwitz – and main character of The Area of ​​Interest. Faced with this American-style documentary, very “History Channel”, with strong effects, we can debate the usefulness of framing the smoke of a cigarette, when we have just mentioned that which came out of the chimneys of the death camps. But the project remains fascinating, less in its reminder of the horror of the past than in its exposure of the darkness that still lingers today: when Höss's daughter, Puppi, became a kind old lady living on the American East Coast, wonders why there were so many survivors of the Shoah or when we see Höss's grandson, Kai, who has become a charismatic pastor, using his terrible family heritage to preach the good word to the soldiers of an American base. ..

Sylvestre Picard

TRIP TO GAZA ★★★☆☆

By Piero Usberti

Fruit of the stay of a young Franco-Italian filmmaker who spent three months in Gaza in the spring of 2018, this gripping documentary films the daily life of thirty-year-old Palestinians suffocated by the political situation and by the permanent state of siege imposed on the population. Initially inspired by the successful work of collecting testimonies in 1963 by Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme in Pretty MayPiero Usberti finally finds his own filmic style and lets his poignant personal reflections on Gazan suffering be heard in voice-over. By diversifying the themes and portraits, this film, the editing of which was completed a week before the deadly conflagration of October 7, 2023, takes a look as tragic as it is universal on a community of characters preparing to fall apart. And the bright light captured by the camera becomes the sad incarnation of an already distant past.

Damien Leblanc

HIDING SADDAM HUSSEIN ★★★☆☆

By Halkawt Mustafa

The Iraq War has already been told through documentary, through memorial film, and rewritten by the Hollywood canon (American Sniper). Kurdish filmmaker Halkwat Mustafa ventures into a new genre with this docufiction about the last hours of dictator Saddam Hussein, hidden with a farmer in Iraq. Through a simple interview we face a modest Iraqi, living through the seasons, who hid the most wanted man in the country for 4 years. The system is nourished by the question of the land: what is this land, this square of cultivated land, which resisted the fires of the Americans without blinking, for 4 years, despite the military deterrence and the rewards of 25 million dollars? This introspective questioning, about the peasant more than the dictator, is simple but convinces with its true lyricism which mixes instrumental melodies, poetic reconstructions and found footage.

Romain Daum

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FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED

LOUISE VIOLET ★★☆☆☆

By Eric Besnard

After Delicious, Eric Besnard goes back in time to France at the end of the 19th century and is interested in the establishment in a country village of the School of the Republic, free, compulsory and recently established secular. While the stories around these teachers charged with this mission, nicknamed the black hussars of the Republic, generally highlight the men who made up the vast majority, Besnard chose as the central character a teacher confronted with a succession of obstacles to bring this revolution to life, marking his desire to add a feminist message to his celebration of the republican ideal of social advancement through merit. But, despite a solid interpretation, the result never really rises to the level of these noble intentions. The fault is an overly academic scenario which, by overexplaining everything, lengthens a film which would have benefited from being greatly tightened.

Thierry Cheze

FIRST DID NOT LIKE

I FEEL FINE ★☆☆☆☆

From Austin and Hailey Spicer

Centered on a teenager who suffers from suicidal obsessive-compulsive disorder, this first feature film directed by a couple of filmmakers from Florida attempts to create a mixture of tones which nevertheless results in an assembly of awkwardness and heaviness. If the description of an honorable community of loving parents and friends taking care of the young man testifies to a desire to make tragedy and the belief in the joy of living coexist, the offbeat musical choices and the stylistic effects mimicking a certain American independent cinema gives the strange sensation that filmmakers are seeking to produce candid entertainment based on serious and serious themes. The very limited interpretation of part of the cast also makes a good number of sequences ring false and the emotion around this group of characters struggles to take hold, due to a lack of artistic coherence.

Damien Leblanc

And also

Here- The Most Beautiful Years of Our Life, by Robert Zemeckis

Oylem, by Arthur Borgnis

The Covers

Giorgino by Laurent Boutonnat

Madam of…, by Max Ophüls

Pleasure, by Max Ophüls

Without tomorrow, by Max Ophüls