From the Comédie-Française, On the Road to Omaha, Golo & Ritchie’s Vacation: what’s new at the cinema this week
What to see in theaters
THE EVENT
OF FRENCH COMEDIE ★★★★☆
By Bertrand Usclat and Martin Darondeau
The essentials
The troupe is on the verge of a nervous breakdown: there are three hours left to save a premiere at the Comédie-Française. A first feature as lively as it is tender, a jubilant manifesto on the collective and the actors.
Only three hours left until the three shots. Nina, a young resident of the Comédie Française (Pauline Clément, demented), has just been promoted to director of a Macbeth and. Tonight is his first. And the obstacles will accumulate: forgotten badge, zealous guard, main actress stuck in a TER in Brest, minister who invites himself, egos which flare up… Everything goes into a tailspin. But at Molière’s house, we don’t cancel. Creators of Broute, Bertrand Usclat and Martin Darondeau sign a first feature set to the tempo of disaster. Filmed behind the scenes in the Richelieu Hall, straddling fiction and documentary, their real-time behind closed doors is carried by a mechanism that is as fun as it is stimulating. And beneath the farce emerges a lucid declaration of love to the troupe, this alchemy where rivalry gives birth to the sublime. A manifesto that defends the common against individual performance, and the stage as a shared art. Let’s call it a leap of faith.
Gaël Golhen
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PREMIERE LIKED A LOT
GORGONA ★★★★☆
By Evi Kalogiropoulou
We owe to Evi Kalogiropoulou – painter, video artist and therefore filmmaker – one of the most original works of this summer by encapsulating the central theme of her work – the female figures of Greek mythology – in a Grindhouse-style exploitation film. A thunderous queer western over which the shadows of Mad Max and Beau travail hover. Gorgonà takes us to a town held by an armed band whose ill leader, having to organize his succession, decides to include among the pretenders to his throne, all male, a woman. His protégé Maria whose life will be turned upside down with the arrival of a singer who will set her heart on fire just as much as the bar where she performs. More than a film, Gorgona is a cry. A cry of rage in response to the femicides which increase year after year in Greece. A way of turning violence against their perpetrators by exploding a patriarchy reluctant to cede an ounce of power through a sorority which takes the place of superpowers. And this dystopian fable ends up taking everything in its path
Thierry Cheze
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ON THE ROAD TO OMAHA ★★★★☆
By Cole Webley
A father wakes his children at dawn and rushes into an old car. Destination ? Unknown. And Cole Webley films their road trip like a headlong escape where each gas station, each seedy motel becomes the scene of an intimate drama against the backdrop of an economic crisis. John Magaro composes a father on the verge of the abyss with a moving truth. His defeated face, his desperate tenderness for his daughter and his son are reminiscent of the great films about losers. The story advances in a subtle way: we guess before understanding, we sense tragedy without ever sinking into misery… Moments of grace rub shoulders with the dull anguish of the predicted catastrophe. In 83 minutes, On the Road to Omaha stands out as a beautiful film about fatherhood in times of crisis – sensitive, heartbreaking, and of rare emotional accuracy.
Gaël Golhen
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FIRST TO LIKE
GOLO & RITCHIE’S VACATION ★★★☆☆
By Martin Fougerol and Ahmed Hamidi
Revealed by social networks (where their videos filmed with their cell phones had millions of views), the duo Golo & Ritchie, two friends who grew up in the Grande Borne district of Grigny (the second having an autism spectrum disorder) arrived at the cinema 2 years ago. Filmed for 350,000 euros, this comedy, already co-directed by Martin Fougerol and Ahmed Hamidi and discovered at the Alpe d’Huez festival, had attracted more than 400,000 admissions! It is therefore logical to find them in this suite where the tandem heads to the Camargue with young people from their neighborhood with the aim of renovating a boat in order to offer holidays to other children. There we find what constituted both the limits and the charm of their first adventures. On the one hand, the feeling of a succession of sketches rather than a formal scenario. On the other, an ability to celebrate successful and happy inclusion without falling into demagoguery and sentimentality. And once again, his qualities take precedence over his faults for a result as endearing as his heroes.
Thierry Cheze
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FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED
THE GIRL IN THE CLOUDS ★★☆☆☆
By Philippe Riche
Passionate about reading, little Providence, at the age of 11, learns her secret from her neighbor – author of works centered on children who protect the nature that she devours. His magic pen is capable of making everything he writes real. And Providence obviously couldn’t help but check it out for herself, taking her guinea pig on this adventure despite herself. A success from the point of view of the rhythm and its vocal casting (Louane Emera, Jamel Debbouze), we remain a little more hungry on the animation side. A film to be reserved for the youngest, The Girl in the Clouds never seeks to reach out to an adult audience through references or winks, unlike the recent Toy Story 5 and Minions and Monsters. Anything but unpleasant, but almost as quickly seen as forgotten.
Thierry Cheze
NIGHTBORN ★★☆☆☆
By Hanna Bergholm
Hanna Bergholm is definitely inspired by monstrous offspring. Revealed in 2022 by Ego (Grand Prize at the Gerardmer festival) in which a 12-year-old girl hid and then incubated a mysterious egg until it hatched, it features a woman who moves with her husband, deep in a Finnish forest, to the house where she spent her childhood, to build a peaceful family life. A project thwarted by the birth of their first child who, very early on, reveals behavior and symptoms that are as mysterious as they are worrying. The director confirms her talent for creating distressing atmospheres thanks to such careful work on light and special effects as on sound. But on this idea of a woman losing all her bearings after motherhood to the point of falling into paranoid madness, this film – although going more frankly into the fantastic – struggles to make a little singular music heard compared to the various recent works which have treated it, from Die my love to If I had legs, I’d kick you with Rose Byrne. And he ends up going around in circles.
Thierry Cheze
GAVAGAI, AND OTHER MISUNDERSTANDINGS ★★☆☆☆
By Ulrich Kölher
In the recent The Loved One by the Spaniard Rodrigo Sorogoyen, the shooting of a film was an opportunity to probe the devouring part of the creator demiurge (played by Javier Bardem) on those around him. This Gavagai by Ulrich Kölher, in a register that is certainly more ambiguous and complex, also considers the filmmaker (a filmmaker in this case, a sort of double of the French Claire Denis) as a being that her position places above her. The tensions of filming in Senegal around a modern – and problematic – transposition of Medea continue with the presentation of the said film at a major international festival. On site, the supposed racism against the main actor (Jean-Christophe Folly) distorts the perception that everyone has of their power and their duty. Here, a neocolonialist reflex, there, blindness. Soon the relationships between people become blurred. If the filming time more or less protected from outside noise, excesses within the team created the beginnings of chaos. In the more subdued setting of a prestigious festival, the work suddenly exposed suddenly reopens wounds. An intriguing self-reflective work.
Thomas Baura
CHARLIE AND THE KANGAROOES ★★☆☆☆
By Kate Woods
A narcissistic and clumsy weather presenter, Chris sees his career collapse after a catastrophic television sequence. While fleeing the city, he hits a kangaroo, takes in her little one and then ends up in Silver Gum, a lost town in the outback. There he meets Charlie, an Aboriginal teenager marked by the death of her father. Together, they will save the animal and – surprise! – learn to save themselves. Charlie and the Kangaroos follows a perfectly marked path, between the arrogant city dweller discovering solidarity, the power of nature and the joys of the bottle given to a marsupial. Everything is written in advance and the emotion is often too strong to be honest. However, the film resists mawkishness thanks to its quiet humor, the luminous presence of Lily Whiteley and an Australian setting which gives it a real character. We never quite believe it (the scenario is nevertheless inspired by a true story) but it’s difficult not to become attached to these characters. Cute.
François Léger
THE MADELEINES ★★☆☆☆
By Arthur Dreyfus
Stéphane-Jacques, who chose to focus on Arthur Dreyfus (Noël and his mother), has all the makings of an extraordinary character who is impossible to put into any box. A lover of Proust… and fist-fucking, he recounts on camera a turbulent existence between a well-established mother who loved him sharing his backroom homosexual experiences with her, a father who constantly sought to destroy him, the AIDS he contracted in the 80s… Confidences collected from his apartment rich in works of art, similar to the lair of a vampire. All with a real sense of storytelling and breaks in rhythm which mean that behind its scathing humor emotion constantly emerges. Arthur Dreyfus has for him the quality of his gaze, empathetic and never ironic, which prevents us from reducing Stéphane-Jacques to a simple picturesque figure. But the 90-minute format was perhaps not the most appropriate to embrace as closely as possible this verve and this life having taken, voluntarily or by force, all the side roads that presented themselves before it. Because everything seems so insane that the long time sometimes ends up working against this documentary whereas a more condensed 52 minutes could have further reinforced the effect of astonishment that we feel in front of his confidences.
Thierry Cheze
PREMIERE DID NOT LIKE
CAPE FAREWELL ★☆☆☆☆
From Vanja d’Alcantara
Upon her release from prison, Toni has no choice but to return to live with her mother to try to rebuild herself and get closer to her daughter Anna. But the one who still remains in love with the father of her child will have a hard time extricating herself from this criminal world that she is trying to escape and will quickly find herself forced by the police to leak information about her uncle, owner of a brewery who gave her a job, to leak information about him, the target of an investigation. Vanja d’Alcantara (The Regular Heart) tries to infuse a neo-noir atmosphere into this story of female emancipation which, despite its remarkable casting (Noée Abita, Olivier Gourmet, Pascale Bussières) suffers from a story that is too programmatic and characters who are too locked into archetypes to create the slightest surprise. And its 1h48 drags on very quickly.
Thierry Cheze
And also
Atikamkew Suns by Chloe Leriche
Under the Kyoto Sky, by Akiko Ohku
The covers
Cast a Dark Shadow by Lewis Gilbert
Cowboy be bop by Shin’ichirô Watanabe
