The Loved One, Autofiction, The Mandalorian and Grogu: what’s new at the cinema this week
What to see in theaters
THE EVENT
BE LOVED ★★★★☆
By Rodrigo Sorogoyen
The essentials
Sorogoyen abandons the thriller for a face-to-face encounter between a filmmaker father (Bardem) and his actress daughter (Luengo) whom he has not seen for years. The director plays for time, stretches out the silences, and creates a masterful film.
It starts with a delay. A young woman pushes open the door of a restaurant at 1:05 p.m. Her father has been waiting for her for five minutes. Five minutes is nothing. Except that we can already sense a tension in the back of Bardem’s neck, a disturbance in the way Luengo crosses the room. A true piece of bravery, the scene stretches for twenty minutes, and when they get up at the end, we start breathing again. The entire film will be held on this line which is reminiscent of Bergman or Pialat. Bardem is a recognized filmmaker who finds his daughter and offers her the leading role in his film. But the filming will only be a setting, because The Loved One is not a film about cinema. It’s a film about two characters who have to live in the same room. A film about faces and time (the one that has passed and the one that remains to meet again). We loved the dry and angry Sorogoyen of the first thrillers. We discover him here at peace, but even more in control of his means.
Gaël Golhen
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PREMIERE LIKED A LOT
SELF-FICTION ★★★★☆
By Pedro Almodovar
Seven years ago Pain and Glory was so shocking that Almodóvar was forgiven for writing about himself – it was done with grace and magic. If it takes up the autofictional principle, Autofiction is nevertheless of another caliber. A bit like a crueler little brother. It’s the same spirit, but without the comfort. Here, the surrogate filmmaker is not in remission, he is running out of fuel, and to cope, he monopolizes the story of those close to him. And for his new scenario, he invents an alter-ego, Elsa (Barbara Lennie), whom he will watch sink into depression and collapse in Lanzarote. Unlike Pain and Glory, Almodóvar is no longer looking for appeasement, he is in court. And he is the accused, parading his accomplices, his muses, his actresses to ask the only question that matters: deep down, what did I live on? What pains of others have nourished my art? The gesture could be indecent, if it were not the subject of the film. Navel-gazing is the material here, never a fault. Pain and Glory was a confession, Autofiction is a confession. It’s less friendly and more honest. And almost bigger.
Gaël Golhen
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FIRST TO LIKE
ALL YOU NEED IS KILL ★★★☆☆
By Kido Yuichiro
It’s amusing, the life of this time loop story, itself trapped in a repetitive spiral: after the illustrated novel, the manga, the American adaptation with Tom Cruise (the always very recommendable Edge of Tomorrow), here is the animated film version. But then what does the new All You Need is Kill taste like this year? That of returning to the original book, except for a change of gender for the main character. The mechanics remain the same: the warrior Rita relives the same day and dies again and again, while humanity leads its final battle against the aliens. Using this video game mechanism, the Japanese from Studio 4°C (Children of the Sea) imagine a teeming universe, almost experimental at times, with a thousand details on each shot. A beautiful work that almost gives the impression of discovering this story for the first time.
François Léger
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FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED
STAR WARS: THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU ★★☆☆☆
By Jon Favreau
Seven years after The Mandalorian series, the director returns with a film which makes the father/son bond between Din Djarin and Grogu its central driving force. We don’t know whose son Din, the Mandalorian, is, nor what planet Grogu comes from, but there are other ties that unite them. They form a spatial father/son duo that works on emotion. One cannot move forward without the other and vice versa. It is this very special bond that the director places at the center of his plot. If he is keen to leave the original universe intact, the director of Iron Man couldn’t help but leave his Marvel touch…Din, armored in chrome and propelled by his rockets, is directly reminiscent of the Iron Man costume. In the same way, the humor and the values – very American – presented are reminiscent of the MCU universe… The film also marks the return of some of the most famous antagonists of the saga: the Hutt. Rotta, son of Jabba, staged as Cinderella mistreated by The Twins, the brother and sister of the crime lord, who want to eliminate him to reign over the clan. The bad guys here unfortunately oppose the good guys without subtlety… And this symbolizes what is wrong more broadly in The Mandalorian and Grogu: by placing emotional bonds and what results from them at the center of the Star Wars universe, it loses a little in tragedy and roughness.
Lou Valette
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VANILLA ★★☆☆☆
By Mayra Hermosillo
Everything is always better with vanilla ice cream. Even the worries of eight-year-old Roberta and the women among whom she grows up: their house is about to be seized. Against all odds, overcoming disagreements and resentments, this small community of individuals who are completely opposed stands together, hermetically. A tender and touching blend of feminine resilience, Vanilla views herself through the prism of childhood. Because without the gaze of the youngest daughter of this reconstituted household, – whose naive wonder sometimes recalls the character of Little Miss Sunshine –, the scenario would turn out frankly cutesy, barely saved by the truly good idea which animates it: this representation of the house as a sanctuary of a femininity besieged by a masculine sometimes symbolized by this bailiff, whom it would not be a question of letting in, sometimes by this aggressor who manages to enter right in the middle. night.
Lucie Chiquer
FIRST DID NOT LIKE
HITLER’S TASTERS ★☆☆☆☆
By Silvio Soldini
Adaptation of a novel published in 2018 but inspired by real events, this (TV) film follows the ordeal of young women requisitioned by the Führer’s entourage to taste his lunch and dinner dishes in order to ensure that no one had the rich idea of poisoning the awful mustachioed man. We are in 1943 somewhere in East Prussia in “the wolf’s den” (Hitler’s HQ) That said, not much to sink your teeth into (sorry!) as the story never really manages to examine the internal tensions between all these women certainly in the same boat but not all in tune with the supposed virtues of Nazi thought. As for the psychological and physical violence of such a martyr, it is never fully felt as everything seems frozen. The fault lies in a decorative aesthetic and a fairly flat staging which places everything on the same scale of value. The zone of disinterest
Thomas Baura
And also
Maximilien Kolbe: A Life Given, by Anthony D’Ambrosio
Passenger, by Andre Ovredal
The recovery
Leaving Las Vegas, by Mike Figgis
