Disclosure day, The Christophers, Le Vertige: new releases at the cinema this week
What to see in theaters
THE EVENT
DISCLOSURE DAY ★★★☆☆
By Steven Spielberg
The essentials
The soon-to-be octogenarian filmmaker takes Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor into his obsession with extra-terrestrials and signs his riskiest film in a long time.
Steven Spielberg never stopped looking at the sky. If we except War of the Worlds, since Close Encounters of the Third Kind, aliens have always represented a promise for him: that of an elsewhere capable of re-enchanting the world. With Disclosure Day, the filmmaker returns to his first loves. But we understand from the start that something has changed. Flying saucers no longer appear in a starry sky but in the saturated world of continuous news channels, declassified military videos and social networks. Each sequence has its visual discovery, each pursuit its staging idea. But, more than the extraterrestrials themselves, it is our relationship to the truth that interests Spielberg. In a world where everyone constructs their own reality from blurry images and fragments of information, ETs are just a symptom. What Disclosure Day seems to be about is a society that has lost faith in everything. And this is precisely where the film gets complicated. Because Spielberg is not content with observing this contemporary fascination with unsolved mysteries. He also seems to share it. His last act is therefore a little destabilizing: he takes the risk of looking at the imaginary Alien with absolute seriousness, to the point of blurring the line between wonder and credulity.
Peter Lunn
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PREMIERE LIKED A LOT
AN ITALIAN YEAR ★★★★☆
By Laura Samani
The Italian Laura Samani has here imagined a hybrid scenario, born from the amalgamation of the plot of a novel dating from 1929 (A School Year, Giani Stuparich) and autobiographical elements. It follows a Swedish student transferred to a technological establishment in the north-east of Italy in the 2000s, taken under her wing by a trio of boys. And the four friends throw themselves headlong into these adolescent wanderings where innocence soon no longer has its place. There is, in An Italian Year, something of the American teen movie but also of these learning stories inherited from naturalist literatures. Launched in all directions according to these essentially melancholic chiaroscuros, the band of amateur performers – Stella Wendick, Giacomo Covi, Pietro Giustolisi and Samuel Volturno –, unearthed by the director burst the screen… and hearts.
Chloé Delos-Eray
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THE FURIOUS ★★★★☆
By Kenji Tanigaki
It’s a film of pure pleasure, of almost delirious generosity. The scenario, scribbled on a metro ticket, at no time attempts to claim sophistication and on the contrary gloriously assumes its bis pedigree. A journalist and a mute man whose little girl has just been kidnapped investigate a network of child traffickers. And break quite a few bones along the way, during incredible, extraordinarily choreographed fights, increasingly abstract as the story progresses and during which, when fists are no longer enough, a whole bunch of objects (bows, hammers, motorcycles, blocks of ice) serve as lethal auxiliaries. The Furious flies like an arrow and above all jubilation, and achieves its ends superbly.
Frédéric Foubert
FIRST TO LIKE
FROM ONE WORLD TO ANOTHER ★★★☆☆
By Jérémie Rénier
Gaspard Ulliel and Jérémie Rénier were much more than friends. Real brothers. And the sudden disappearance of the first on January 19 left the second inconsolable. his painful grieving process, Jérémie Rénier crossed paths with Loury Lag, a professional explorer, in whom he found an outstretched hand to return to the surface: the offer to accompany him on his next expedition to the Arctic. This documentary, his very first solo production, is the story of this journey. 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 who has disappeared forever in order to free himself from it. The beauty of what he says there, the way in which he makes us share and feel what he is going through without twisting our arms commands admiration. There is no doubt that Gaspard would be proud of his friend. From his brother.
Thierry Cheze
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FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED
THE CHRISTOPHERS ★★☆☆☆
By Steven Soderbergh
This is the biannual Soderbergh. Two children of a famous painter and the article of the decide to hire a young artist capable of imitating his style to perfection so that she can unknowingly finish some of his paintings left unfinished – paintings which will bring millions to the thieving heirs at the time of the great man’s death. The Christophers initially pretends to be heading towards a scam comedy or a heist film, but in reality will mainly revolve around long verbal jousts between the forger and the painter, drawing a reflection on the posterity of “problematic” artists and the fundamental impurity of any artistic approach. Subjects unfortunately treated in a very monotonous form, just energized by the performances of Michaela Coel and Ian McKellen. Did Soderbergh purposely make this film about unfinished paintings look like they were painted in a hurry? The Christophers is a sketch rather than a master’s canvas.
Frédéric Foubert
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SON OF NOBODY ★★☆☆☆
By Safy Nebbou
Devastated after the accidental death of his wife when they had just adopted a 4-year-old Thai boy, Thomas decides to take the boy to his country to find his biological family and give him another chance. From this starting point of high emotional intensity, Safy Nebbou (The one you believe) develops an initiatory story in which we anticipate each of the twists and turns too much to fully abandon ourselves to it and not get bored. And this despite a delicacy never found wanting and the accuracy of Romain Duris
Thierry Cheze
A SECOND LIFE ★★☆☆☆
By Laurent Slama
A year after the deliciously Rohmerian Le Rendez-vous de l’été by Valentine Cadic, here are the Paris Olympics again and the very special atmosphere that reigned there, the backdrop for a new feature film. A film constructed as a contrast between the joyful spirit of celebration then at work and the deep depression experienced by its heroine, working for a short-term apartment rental company, after a painful breakup from which she is struggling to get over. And this despite meeting a carefree Californian to whom she gives the keys to her apartment and who will decide to take her under his wing. Shot on a more than reduced budget, A second life benefits from the nuanced composition of Agathe Rousselle, which is decidedly too rare since Titane, which revealed it. But the story lacks too many twists and turns to fit into a feature film format.
Thierry Cheze
AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD ★★☆☆☆
By Guérin van de Vorst and Sophie Muselle
Alexia (Mara Taquin), a 25-year-old trainee nurse, arrives in a closed ward of a psychiatric hospital for her first day. An assignment that she did not choose, far from it, but which she approaches steeped in illusions but also with the certainties of a young woman who has recently graduated. Very quickly, she finds herself confronted with the reality on the ground. And especially to patients who, for some, are almost his age. Despite warnings from her superiors, she struggles to keep the necessary distance from them to care for them but also to protect herself. Here the camera never moves more than a few seconds away from her, allowing the spectators to follow as closely as possible her torments, her disenchantments but also the small victories which punctuate her daily life. So much so that they can sometimes feel like they’re watching a documentary. Too bad the film gives in a little too regularly to Manichaeism.
Anne Lenoir
THE LAST TRUE SAMURAI ★★☆☆☆
By Jun’ichi Yasuda
If Jean-Marie Poiré and Christian Clavier had looked into the idea of a Visitors 4 in Japan, perhaps they would have come across something approaching the scenario of The Last True Samurai. Here no grimoire or omission of quail eggs but a torrential rain and a lightning bolt, which transport a samurai from the Edo period into the present, on the set of a historical series. Mistaken for an extra, he became the darling of filming, before being hired as a professional stuntman. Really amusing in its first hour which is a series of misunderstandings and culture shocks, the story visibly gets bogged down in its second part, which is very repetitive. Typical case of a film which has eyes bigger than its stomach (a duration of 2 hours 11 is almost suicidal on such a synopsis) but makes up for it with a main character solidly played by Makiya Yamaguchi, and a look at modern Japan (a little) more wicked than one could imagine.
François Leger
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PREMIERE DID NOT LIKE
Dizziness ★☆☆☆☆
By Quentin Dupieux
Quentin Dupieux makes animated films? Well, gosh, we didn’t see it coming. But obviously, there is a twist: the director of Yannick, Le Daim ou Mandibles decided to surround himself with a very small group of animators and to borrow a radical aesthetic, close to the crude 3D video games of the first PlayStation. Very funny idea to which is added a scenario where the characters of Alain Chabat and Jonathan Cohen realize that the world around them does not really exist, and that they live in a simulation full of bugs. Swinging its best (only?) jokes in the first twenty minutes, Le Vertige then completely collapses, lost between counter metaphysics and a gloubi-boulga on the emptiness of the tech world. The film’s promo, which transformed actors and journalists into polygons, was much more stimulating.
François Leger
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And also
The Athlete, by Marie-Claude Fournier
My darling family, by Isild Le Besco
The covers
The Lover, by Jean-Jacques Annaud
Ghost in the Shell, by Mamoru Oshii
Legally Blonde, by Robert Luketic
On my lips, by Jacques Audiard
The Party, by Blake Edwards
