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THE EVENT
SEEDS OF THE WILD FIG TREE ★★★★☆
By Mohammad Rasoulof
The essentials
Having left with a consolation prize at Cannes, this drama by exiled Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof is of such infernal power that it would be wrong to reduce it to the sole context in which it was born.
Rasoulof stages here a stifling family huis clos where the noises of an Iranian society that sees its youth rise up crack the edges of the frame and more surely the walls of the apartment in Tehran, almost the only place of the intrigue. With at the center, Iman, a good father recently promoted within the administrative hierarchy of a revolutionary tribunal. This will allow his wife and two daughters to finally live in the “four rooms” so desired and too bad if to do so he has to sign death sentences without really trying to find out if the sentence is justified. But Iman quickly sees her two teenage daughters throw back in her face the cruelty of the authorities of this country and precipitate the progressive breakup of a family straitjacket that has become untenable. Imperious, with an absolute precision of staging, the film slides imperceptibly from the moral drama in huis clos to the paranoid thriller, and allows us to see and understand the effects caused by authoritarianism and repression. A great film from an essential filmmaker.
Thomas Baurez
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FIRST LIKED
SPEAK NO EVIL ★★★☆☆
By James Watkins
In this remake of the Danish psychological horror film Don't say anythingwe follow bourgeois Americans living in the United Kingdom who meet, on vacation in Italy, a British family as noisy and relaxed as they are polite and reserved. And the current goes so well that months later, the Americans are invited to spend a weekend with the British. But barely have they crossed the threshold of their hosts' house that unease sets in… Unease that will then spend most of the film climbing and climbing again. James Watkins excels at creating a climate of diffuse anxiety and latent threat that soon becomes frankly suffocating, helped in his enterprise by an unleashed McAvoy in lad warm, always on the verge of exploding and revealing his thick brute nature, through a story studded with a thousand small sociological observations in the service of a reflection on submission to authority, toxic masculinity and social differences which end up forming unbridgeable chasms.
Frederic Foubert
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MY LIFE MY MOUTH ★★★☆☆
By Sophie Fillières
For her final film, Sophie Fillières (who passed away on July 31, 2023 at only 58 years old) has created a gem of melancholy and humor mixed in the form of a self-portrait of a woman who, having reached fifty, after having been a good mother, a colleague prized by others and a great lover, appears at a crossroads, confronted with loneliness and a growing fear of death. Few films are capable of talking about depression with such acuity, lightness and depth. We come out of it with a smile on our lips and tears in our eyes but also the certainty that Agnès Jaoui, sublime in the central role, would make an equally sublime César for best actress next February.
Thierry Cheze
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CONSERVATORY STREET ★★★☆☆
By Valérie Donzelli
Valérie Donzelli is never where you expect her. Shortly after her Cesar for Love and Forestshere she is at the helm of her first documentary, born from a meeting with Clémence, a student at the Paris Conservatory where she gave a master class. Conservatory Street accompanies the show – a Hamlet revised and corrected – which Clémence stages before leaving school. Valérie Donzelli films the rehearsals and collects the confidences of Clémence and her performers (including Lomane de Dietrich, the revelation of Leave who still shines on the screen) in this unique moment of their journey, just before taking flight, where no dream seems inaccessible. The empathy she displays, her way of being among them gives a particular emotion to this film which also subtly dusts off the image of the figure of the director, here anything but a tyrannical demiurge but capable of sharing his doubts without losing control of his troupe.
Thierry Cheze
DAY OF ANGER ★★★☆☆
By Jean-Luc Herbulot
Last year in SaloumJean-Luc Herbulot enjoyed marrying genres, thus composing a singular and intriguing work. Three years later, he repeated the experiment in Day of Wrath – a combination of thriller and fantasy in a nicely balanced way. Joey Starr plays Frank, a hitman for the Italian mafia. When a path to redemption with his beloved presents itself to him, he seizes it. But along the way, he meets a strange guy – that’s when the trouble comes back. Drawn into the twists and turns of a physical and mental labyrinth, Frank must confront his past and his demons – literally. Behind its detective-style aesthetic with its raincoats and dark dampness, the film touches on the supernatural embodied by this sociopath who, like Dante’s Virgil, guides us to Hell.
Anthea Claux
BILLY THE COWBOY HAMSTER ★★★☆☆
By Antoine Rota and Caz Murrel
Compilation of six episodes of the series adapting the children's albums by Catharina Valckx, Billy the Cowboy Hamster is a real nice surprise. Each episode is more charming than the last, skillfully playing on the clichés of the Wild West and childhood mythologies (big up in passing to the reference to Zelda, with the episode on the Mojo tree) in a very refreshing half-anime half-pencil style… But it is above all the personality of the protagonists that wins the day: the dubbing, of incredible quality, gives Suzie the badger or Jean-Claude the earthworm real characters, surprising but immediately familiar. Which completes the transformation of this best of into a real little western epic. Between two prayers for news of the rest ofHorizon Costner, we are ready for a Chapter Two of Billy the Cowboy Hamster whenever you want.
Sylvestre Picard
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FIRST TO AVERAGE LIKED
THE BARBARIANS ★★☆☆☆
By Julie Delpy
Julie Delpy alternates in her career as a director between chronicles of expatriate bobos (Two Days in Paris), the more daring experiments flirting with the genre (The Countess) and our own comedies. The Barbarians clearly belongs to the latter category. It's a feel-good movie, yes, but inspired by the feel-bad mood of today's France. The pitch is clever: in Brittany, in Paimpont, the municipal council voted in favor of welcoming a family of Ukrainian refugees – but in the end it's Syrians who arrive… A choral film against a backdrop of rifts between those who want to reach out and those who prefer to close the door, The Barbarians alternates moods by zapping from one character to another, going from a serious tone to a more joking one. These not very fluid changes of register give a messy side to the film, moreover quite predictable in its reconciling purpose but which is saved by its actors.
Frederic Foubert
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NO CHAINS NO MASTERS ★★☆☆☆
By Simon Moutaïrou
Set in 1759 in the heart of Isle de France (now Mauritius), the first feature film by Simon Moutaïrou (the co-screenwriter of Black box, Goliath..) follows the fate of Massamba and Mati, a father and daughter, slaves on a French sugar plantation. When Mati runs away, a cruel slave hunter is tasked with finding her and Massamba escapes in turn. By tackling the subject, very rarely covered in cinema, of the abominable slavery system practiced for several centuries by France, the film demonstrates a rare ambition, supported by immersive sets and frontal violence that draw the contours of an imposing pamphlet. But the constant recourse to the codes of survival and the desire to charge this tragic story with a magical mysticism and a fantastic aesthetic strangely attenuates the scope of the characters and limits the realism of this nevertheless precious historical testimony.
Damien Leblanc
FIRST DIDN'T LIKE
COME AND WATCH ★☆☆☆☆
By Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann
Stuck somewhere in Europe between Yórgos Lánthimos (Greece) and Ruben Östlund (Sweden), Austrian cinema has its share of filmmakers who are adept at torture, both towards their characters and their spectators. Produced by Ulrich Seidl (that already sets the tone), Come, see, come, come presents itself at first as a scathing comedy against the ultra-rich, the darling children of decadent capitalism. Very quickly, the habits and structures disinterest Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann (the directing duo), who prefer the ease of the malaise caused by this billionaire family disconnected from the everyday world. We should laugh at the father's taste for manhunting (against the poor, therefore) or the various family problems encountered by the mother or daughter… at worst, we leave the room before the end, at best we sigh with exasperation until the end.
Nicolas Moreno
TOXICILY ★☆☆☆☆
By François-Xavier Destors and Alfonso Pinto
“It is better to die of cancer than to die of hunger”we hear on a Sicilian beach blackened by the thick fumes of one of the largest petrochemical complexes in Europe. Sacrificed on the altar of industrial progress, the beautiful postcard Syracuse gives way to a toxic land, a sick lung where pollution suffocates through the screen. The Franco-Italian duo at work behind the camera chooses to make heard the voices of the silent victims who have no choice but to witness before their eyes the ravages of this ecological disaster and to suffer the collateral damage, sometimes fatal. But between very real apocalyptic images against a backdrop of distressing music and a monotonous succession of sometimes clumsily scripted testimonies, the documentary momentum of Toxicly struggles to find its rhythm and its coherence. And to go beyond a simple journalistic investigation.
Lou Hupel
And also
Pat and Mat- One last turn of the screw, by Marek Benea, Stepan Gajdos and Kees Prins
Little tales under the ocean, short film program
The Use of the World, a journey between nature and culture, by Agnes Fouilleux
Resumption
Be natural, the hidden story of Alice Guy-Blaché, by Pamela B. Green