Angoulême 2025 – Day 5: Jérémie Rénier, Duo Joséphine Japy -Mélanie Laurent and Jérôme Bonnell

Daily report of the 18th edition of the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival

The film of the day: From one world to another of Jérémie Rénier

By dint of being overused, the expression undoubtedly ended up being demonetized. But Gaspard Ulliel and Jérémie Rénier were much more than friends. True brothers. And the brutal disappearance of the first on January 19, 2022 in a ski accident left the second inconsolable. How to get up with an absence every day a little more unbearable? During his painful mourning process, Jérémie Rénier crossed the road to Loury Lag, a professional explorer, in whom he found an attentive ear and even more an outstretched hand to go up to the surface: the proposal to accompany him during his next expedition to the Arctic.

This documentary, his very first solo achievement (seven years after Carnivores, which he had co-signed with his brother Yannick), is the story of this trip. The one where faced with the immensity of the landscapes, the extreme conditions encountered and the unexpected and destabilizing adventures that they generate, he will confront the pain of the absence of the friend disappeared forever to free it. Made by another, this voyage accompanied in voice- delivers by his words as a shared diary, could have appeared immodest or voyeurist. But the modesty of Jérémie Rénier, the man he is and who has never drawn the cover – in his films as in his interviews – naturally prevents him from falling into this pitfall. The beauty of what he says, the way he shares and feel what he goes through without twisting his arm forces admiration. No doubt he first and foremost made this film for him.

But over the past 73 minutes, his eminently personal remarks becomes universal. And echoes these pains that we all felt in front of a loved one who is difficult to conceive that we will not see him again. While signing a real feature film to the big screen, as ambitious in its form as in its words, thanks to the remarkable work of the CELECOR Operator Fabien Ruyssen. There is no doubt that Gaspard would be proud of his friend. Of his brother.

Indeterminate

The duo of the day: Mélanie Laurent and Joséphine Japy for That shines in combat

In 2014, Mélanie Laurent offered, in her second feature film, Breathto Joséphine Japy the character who was going to change the course of her career. And eleven years later, the roles are reversed. It’s Joséphine Japy’s turn to pass for the first time behind the camera with That shines in combata story inspired by his own little sister with a rare genetic disorder and the blast that this heavy handicap has had on his family. A film of immense sensitivity without a moment pouring into the pathos. And to play the mother of this child, that through whom we live this story, Joséphine Japy therefore chose to call on … Mélanie Laurent!

A mother on the verge of exhaustion, forced to manage what can be as she can then that her husband seems to have chosen to multiply the hours permanently at the office to avoid confronting reality. A role as fascinating as the breeding of the contradictory emotional coaster coaster arises at any time and in all the directions that it transcends with a disarming naturalness and an ever-performative virtuosity. A composition as striking as that of I’m fine don’t worry which had earned him in 2007 the César de la Revelation, carried by the gaze of a director who knows her so well. The art of transmission.

Release on December 31

The director of the day: Jérôme Bonnell for The condition

Change of register for Jérôme Bonnell with this adaptation ofLove by Lénor de Rocondo awarded in 2015 of the Prix des Libraires. He who (from Adventure time has Dear Léapassing by I’m waiting for someone or the recent To joy On Arte) has so magnificently explored the feeling of love, in his passions like her torments, stages here the drift of non-feelings through a marriage arranged in France in 1908. He who unites, in a small provincial village, André, a haughty notary, an eminent figure of the big local bourgeoisie and victory, immediately cramped in the role that is assigned to him, that of the model. Before a third person invited himself to this duet: celestial, their young good, whom André – to whom victory refuses any carnal contact – will force to sleep with him and who will get pregnant. And now this opulent house already rich in buried secrets will welcome another: this child will be that of the couple, the heir so hoped!

But the maternal instinct is not ordered and seeing the infant she gave birth to downturn will pushed heavenly to intervene. And to weave a special bond with Victoire. We find here everything that makes the salt of Bonnell’s cinema. The quality of its actors management (the impeccable Trio Swann Arlaud – Louise Chevillotte – Galatéa Bellugi). His perfect management of twists and turns in fluidity and therefore in surprise. His mastered and never ostentatious staging that distances this closed door in one more suffocating house -all academism for what is his very first film in costumes. And the always relevant look he poses on his complex female characters with often unexpected reactions in a time when, condemned to undergo, their liberation process required extraordinary courage and will. And all this gives birth to an infinite delicacy film where this story of more than a century finds resonance in our time without needing to emphasize why.

Released December 3, 2025