Elusive 3, The Eagles of the Republic, The Good Star: new releases at the cinema this week

What to see in theaters

THE EVENT
ELUSIVE 3 ★☆☆☆☆

By Ruben Fleischer

The essentials

Nine years after their last sleight of hand, the “Four Horsemen return to the stage. Ruben Fleischer, new conductor of the franchise, tries to revive the magic by dusting off the formula: more effects, more rhythm, more flash, a super villain. There’s only one thing missing: a bit of soul… And for that, you’ll have to go through it again.

The film starts off with a bang with a fun show. Our vigilante horsemen put on a show which they have the secret to and succeed in stealing the fortune of a few yuppies who have cheated the taxman… Until we understand that these horsemen are only holograms mastered by three young magicians who possess the hypnotic virtuosity of the elders. But the machine runs out of steam very quickly. Fleischer unfolds a scenario that gets tangled in its twists and turns, too preoccupied with tempo to construct a real mystery. The turns come one after another, the editing shines, the tricks wear out. However, the ambition is there: to modernize the saga with a new generation supposed to take over. But their characters, sketched in haste, never really exist. Elusive 3 wants to create illusions, but no longer believes in its own magic. As always the story makes no sense, and Fleischer films this great void without any idea or real point of view. What remains is a brilliant showcase, roughly rhythmic but never lively.

Gaël Golhen

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PREMIERE LIKED A LOT

KIKA ★★★★☆

By Alexe Poukine

This is the most disarming film about grief seen in a long time. And whose first 30 minutes, dominated by a keen sense of rupture, knowingly postpone the moment of understanding what type of film we are in to propel us instantly into the head of its heroine, herself destabilized by what she is going through. Because this Belgian social worker finds herself struck by the sudden death of the man for whom she fell in love at first sight and left the father of her daughter. And, now alone, pregnant with him, without financial stability, she will find herself, through a combination of circumstances,… learning the profession of dominatrix and earning her living as a sex worker! Coming from the documentary, Alexe Poukine here avoids any sordid miserabilism like any “exotic” representation of the BDSM world. And this story of this reconstruction truly unlike any other also relies on a virtuoso performer capable of riding this emotional roller coaster without ever falling off the ride: Manon Clavel.

Thierry Cheze

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FIRST LIKED

THE EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC ★★★☆☆

By Tarik Saleh

The new film by the director of Cairo Confidential opens with the new filming of George Fahmy, actor-star nicknamed “the pharaoh of the screens” in the Egypt of nationalist President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi re-elected for a third term in 2023 with nearly 90% of the votes. If the political context of these Eagles of the Republic is very real, the drama that will play out is only cinema. Fahmy is, in fact, a fictional character. It’s the brilliant Fares Fares who embodies him with all the necessary relaxation, tinged with a touch of ridiculousness and spinelessness. In tune with this puppet character, the film establishes a concern that is all the stronger as it creeps into a strange discomfort. Saleh seeks to pierce a hole in this reality suddenly undermined by an act of resistance which could only be yet another masquerade. Through a subtle game of editing and distancing, he (de)shows that power dictates the representation it intends to give of itself. Once the simulacrum is not questioned, reality no longer belongs to itself. Strong.

Thomas Baura

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WE BELIEVE YOU ★★★☆☆

By Charlotte Devillers and Arnaud Dufeys

We Believe You opens with a mother dragging her unruly son by the scruff of the neck in order to arrive on time for his appointment at the youth protection court. Facing a judge and alongside an ex-husband who is questioning custody, Alice struggles to defend her choice to take her children away from their father for two years now. There are many films that dissect the complexity of the legal system, and this one is no exception: its unbreathable mix of sexual violence and presumption of innocence acts like a punch in the windpipe. But the ability of the Devillers-Dufeys duo not to rely on the dramatic nature of the subject distinguishes We believe you from the usual trial film. They prefer to rethink it as an action thriller, where the pleadings of three real lawyers follow one another, in a gesture bordering on documentary. Between a feeling of urgency and an oppressive atmosphere, the physiological reactions take turns: shivers in the face of Myriem Akeddiou’s interpretation, nausea during the opposing party’s arguments, muscular tensions in the face of a failing system. And finally, a tight throat when the screen goes black again.

Lucie Chiquer

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THE DREAMERS ★★★☆☆

By Isabelle Carré

For her directorial debut. Isabelle Carré brings her novel to the screen, in which she recounts the suicide attempt into which her malaise pushed her and the way in which the theater saved her. She plays an actress who comes to lead writing workshops at Necker hospital with teenagers in great psychological distress. And who, through their contact, sees the moment come to the surface when, at 14, she herself was interned for trying to end her life. And we find in director Isabelle Carré all the sensitivity that we admire in her acting. This ability to combine finesse and power, to arouse emotion without twisting our arm. Carried by a group of amazing young actors (including Melissa Boros, the heroine of Alpha and Tessa Dumont Janod), Les Rêveurs refuses to feel sorry for the fate of its characters and prefers to show the light at the end of the road. A refusal of any ease which makes its director grow.

Thierry Cheze

SIX DAYS THIS SPRING ★★★☆☆

By Joachim Lafosse

It’s all in the title. For 1h30 we will follow Sana, a destitute woman who decides to offer her two twins a week’s vacation – with the one whose life she shares without having told them – in the hyper-luxurious villa in the south of France of her ex-in-laws where she is no longer allowed to set foot since her divorce. This film was inspired by Joachim Lafosse (Les Intranquilles) by a striking memory from his youth, violent awareness of the social downgrading experienced by his mother after her divorce. And through his minimalist staging of this bubble of carelessness ready to explode at any moment, he powerfully conveys this deaf and humiliating violence of the king’s money. By giving a central place to the off-camera which symbolizes this permanent anguish born from everything that her in-laws have deep down always made Sana feel: her illegitimacy, this certainty that she will never be one of them. A film under constant tension.

Thierry Cheze

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FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED

THE GOOD STAR ★★☆☆☆

By Pascal Elbé

Four years after the very pretty and autobiographical We are made to get along, Pascal Elbé returns to directing with a daring film in the period of community tensions experienced by our country and more broadly the planet since the terrorist attacks of Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023. It features a man (Benoît Poelvoorde, insane in a masterful role as an idiot) who, by his choice to have deserted in 1940 after only one day spent at the front, plunged his family in a precarious situation that has become more and more unbearable to live with. Until the day he thinks he has found the solution to get out of this quagmire: pass himself off as Jewish in order to benefit from the help of smugglers to access the free zone! Under the assumed and combined influence of La Grande Vadrouille and La vie est belle by Benigni, La Bonne Etoile constantly evolves on a fine line between comedy and tragedy. It is through his humor, his sense of dialogue, his way of playing with the clichés surrounding Jews and therefore of creating a dialogue between yesterday and today, that Elbé is most convincing. Much more in any case than in the emotional register where he hammers things home too hard to convince and not lapse into pure lachrymation.

Thierry Cheze

THE AMAZON GANG ★★☆☆☆

By Mélissa Drigeard

They hit the headlines at the end of the 80s. Five childhood friends, mistreated by life, decided to improvise as bank burglars, pretending to be men so as not to be recognized. Mélissa Drigeard (Everything Smiles) has chosen to take on the story of this Amazon Gang in the form of fiction. And, as is often the case, with these kinds of personalities as strong as they are endearing embarked on extraordinary adventures that exceed them, we have the feeling that a documentary (like Solveig Anspach with Let Nobody Move) would have been a more appropriate form. To make credible what seems wrongly romanticized here. Even if the fiction allows you to enjoy the flawless compositions of the beautiful cast assembled, Izia Higelin and Mallory Wanecque in the lead. With, however, a limit: the feeling that it is necessary at all costs to balance the number of scenes between the actresses while not all their characters have the same interest. Hence the guilty lengths.

Thierry Cheze

THE INCREDIBLE SNOW WOMAN ★★☆☆☆

By Sébastien Betbeder

French cinema so Parisian makes the Province its new El Dorado to be in crisis carrying out the great return to the original lands. Leave one day, Connemara, The Incredible Snow Woman…, and always Bastien Bouillon as the common denominator (rather incidental in this case). Here Coline (Blanche Gardin) arrives in the Jura with a too-heavy secret that she ultimately leaves to ruin in the depths of Greenland. It starts off well with all-round tensions, then it gets bogged down on the ice where the story slips severely.

Thomas Baura

THE GREAT DEPARTURE ★★☆☆☆

By Pierre Filmon

With The Great Departure, Pierre Filmon (Entre deux trains) captures love at first sight between an Australian (Xavier Samuel, seen notably in Blonde) and an Indian woman (Sonal Sehgal, also a screenwriter) in Varanasi. The film takes the form of a road trip where criticism of the patriarchy, local customs and crazy love combine. The three subjects do not always communicate ideally and the couple’s chemistry is sometimes questionable, but the staging on the border between documentary and fiction is subtle enough to maintain interest.

François Léger

And also

Cry of the soul, by Dominique Othenin-Gérard

Detective Conan: Memory Recovered, by Katsuya Shigehara

Front – Reverse shot of retention, by Annick Redolfi

The Voice of the White Glacier, by Charles Lavilanie

The covers

The Englishwoman and the Duke, by Eric Rohmer

The Strange Obsession, by Kon Ichikawa

Merry Christmas, by Christian Carion