Girl, Flowers for Tokyo, Paw Patrol-The Movie: Mission Dino: what’s new at the cinema this week

What to see in theaters

THE EVENT
GIRL ★★★☆☆

By Shu Qi

The essentials

Shu Qi directs for the first time with a largely autobiographical story about a dysfunctional family, seen through the eyes of a teenage girl. Successful beginnings

Shu Qi began her career as an actress exactly 30 years ago, evolving since then between arthouse cinema (Millenium Mambo), martial arts (The Assassin) and action (The Transporter…). But she had never been behind the camera before. The Girl who gives her title to her first film set in Taiwan in 1998 is a teenager suffocating under the weight of a dysfunctional family (a brutal father and a mother haunted by a traumatic past) who finds in friendship with another high school girl, her exact opposite, a way – finally – to express what is in her heart. This Girl is also and above all Shu Qi herself who tells her story with infinite delicacy, aware that nothing better than the beauty and softness of her images can translate the violence experienced or felt. And if the duration sometimes works against certain films, here it is the opposite. The long time helps both to take this character out of a simple archetypal figure and to experience what she feels.

Thierry Cheze

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FIRST TO LIKE

FLOWERS FOR TOKYO ★★★☆☆

By Yuiga Danzuka

There is some Kore-Eda in this first Japanese feature film, discovered during the last Quinzaine des Cinéastes in Cannes. This same taste for exploring family ties. And this same desire to do it with a delicacy that contrasts with the violence of the situations. We follow a flower delivery man who, through the chance of an order, comes across his father who had been out of his life and that of his sister since their childhood and whom he holds responsible for their mother’s suicide ten years earlier. Will this son who suffered so much from this absence and this father who knowingly sacrificed his family to his work as a renowned architect be able to reestablish a bond? This is the common thread of a film whose contemplative aspect is certainly sometimes at a distance but above all allows it to densify its subject, to leave more room for the staging (remarkable work around the architecture of the city of Tokyo) and to tell through this portrait of a damaged family the violence of human relationships in a society where, on the surface, everything seems calm and sanitized.

Thierry Cheze

PAW PATROL THE MOVIE: DINO MISSION ★★★☆☆

By Cal Brunker

Created in 2013 on Nickelodeon, this animated series featuring a group of dogs specializing in dangerous interventions of all kinds was released for the first time in long format. And its box office success ($144 million for a budget of 26 million) inevitably called for sequels. And after La Super Patrol in 2023, here is the third episode. To say that it revolutionized the franchise would be a lie, but it nevertheless proved to be the most successful of the three. Following a storm at sea, the dog brigade washes up on a still unexplored tropical island… and populated by dinosaurs not hostile towards humans, attracting both scientists fascinated by this discovery and mercenaries attracted by the giant diamonds of which the place is full. By playing with the Jurassic Park saga, Mission Dino multiplies the nods aimed at a more adult audience without ever losing its target, the little ones. Led at a good pace which leaves no room for boredom, good family entertainment.

Thierry Cheze

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FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED

KYMA, THE MYSTERIOUS WAVE ★★☆☆☆

By Romain Daudet-Jahan

The gimmicks of American science fiction arrive in the middle of the French countryside: a scientist who disappears, unusual phenomena which disturb the animals, a living sound wave on the run and soldiers in suits who crisscross the village to find her. In the middle of all this, three teenagers (Tony, Ousmane and Zoé) tame the creature, thwart the institutions’ Machiavellian plans and, as a bonus, save the day for the adults. It feels like something straight out of a Spielberg. The only difference is that here, a gap gradually widens between the execution and the director’s ambition. Despite beautiful visual effects and successful sound work, Romain Daudet-Jahan’s film searches for an identity as it unfolds its plot and neglects its dialogue as much as the characters who speak them. A nice SF universe, although not quite mastered.

Lucie Chiquer

THE SILENCES OF RIYADH ★★☆☆☆

From Haifaa Al Mansour

We had discovered – and were instantly won over – by the cinema of Saudi director Haifaa al Mansour with Wadjda in which a 12-year-old child struggles to acquire a bicycle, an object forbidden to young girls in the Wahhabi kingdom. This pioneer – the very first woman to have directed a feature film in her country – has never stopped highlighting heroines (including a biopic of Mary Shelley with Elle Fanning). And within this film, The Silences of Riyad marks the third part (after Wadjda and The Perfect candidate in 2010) of his trilogy centered on the condition of women in Saudi Arabia and their fight against a system that discriminates and locks them up. In this case the young employee of a police station who decides to resume the closed investigation into the lifeless body of a teenager found without being able to be identified. The intention is obviously more than laudable but – with the notable exception of its final stretch – this thriller suffers from a side that is too marked and by extension expected to convince. And Wadjda still remains – and by far – the peak of his journey to this day

Thierry Cheze

COTTON QUEEN ★★☆☆☆

By Suzannah Mirghani

In Sudan, young Nafisa is torn between the heavy anti-colonial heritage passed down by her grandmother, the respected matriarch of a cotton village, and her desire for independence. An industrialist settles in the area and with him, the double threat of the cultivation of genetically modified cotton and an arranged marriage. Violence is at the heart of this scenario, which nevertheless never falls into complacency. It is sexist, capitalist, colonial. It haunts the remains of the mansion in which the businessman settles, insinuates itself into the dogmatic imperative of absolute purity – because “for the cotton to be pure, the picker must be pure”, says a woman from the village – and into the practice of excision. The Sudanese-Russian Suzannah Mirghani creates a social fable in the form of a learning story, whose militant overtones are however not enough to hide the structural weaknesses.

Chloé Delos-Eray

And also

Hunting day, by Annick Blanc

The Gendarmes, by Stephan Archinard and François Prévôt-Leygonie

The covers

Antonia and her daughters by Marleen Gorris

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly by Sergio Leone

Enamorada by Emilio Fernandez

Venice, the moon and you by Dino Risi