Twisters, Santosh, Mad Fate: what’s new in cinemas this week

Thierry Cheze

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MAD FATE ★★★☆☆

From Soi Cheang

Between the shock Limbo and lCity of Darkness (in theaters August 14), Soi Cheang has shot another film: the story of a slightly crazy astrologer who takes under his wing a borderline teenager fascinated by the serial killer who prowls the city… Where Limbo And City of Darkness are particularly striking for their very pure, very direct storytelling, Mad Fate takes a malicious pleasure in confusing the tracks and the stories, as if it wanted to play with the very notion of destiny as the astrologer tries to manipulate it. The film oscillates between several poles, ranging from powerful visual shocks, chatter and sometimes hilarious sequences of charlatan magic. But in the end, the result is a little more Mad that Fate and we would have liked him to choose his side more clearly.

Sylvestre Picard

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ENGLISH DINNER ★★★☆☆

By Matt Winn

Times are tough for Tom and his wife Sarah. The architect who was once in demand has just suffered a resounding failure. The house where they live has become unaffordable and forced to sell it, they organize a final dinner with a couple of close friends. An evening that turns into a nightmare when, after imposing herself there, Jessica, a former friend, a successful writer whom Sarah is jealous of (convinced that she has more than just designs on her man) hangs herself in the garden! If it came to the ears of the buyer of the place, this gesture would inevitably sign the cancellation of the sale. Then begins a festival of stratagems to sneak Jessica’s body back from her home. And if this story would undoubtedly have had more power on stage, the deadpan humour so British that is deployed there, the sense of misunderstandings and a gallery of characters much more devious than their appearance would suggest make this English dinner a scathing satire of the British middle class.

Thierry Cheze

TWO MOTHERS ★★★☆☆

By Victor Iriarte

Twenty years ago, Vera was separated from her son at birth. At the hospital, when she saw him being born, she was told that the child had died and her file disappeared from the archives. As if this birth that she had nevertheless experienced had not existed. Like many mothers whose children were taken away by the Franco dictatorship – it is now estimated that 300,000 could be affected – she will then look for this son that she was never able to know. Two mothers is experienced as a fairly well-orchestrated investigative film about a mother’s determination to find her son and, even more, to make up for lost time. It is especially worth watching for its subject and the way it is treated through the prism of two different points of view, that of the biological mother and then the adoptive mother. It is a shame that its slow pace prevents you from being fully won over by this story, which also turns out to be an important history lesson.

Emma Poesy

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FIRST TO MEDIUM LIKED

EAT THE NIGHT ★★☆☆☆

By Jonathan Vinel and Caroline Poggi

Eat the Night achieves a small cinematic feat, not so trivial: to realistically represent a fake video game in the space of its fiction – something that all the films that have attempted it have failed to do (fans ofAvalon can write to the editorial office to complain). In this case, it is a question of Darknoona fantasy MMORPG that takes place between World of Warcraft And League of Legendsand who obsesses the young Apolline, while her brother and playmate prefers to sell synthetic drugs in the underground surrounding Le Havre. But if everything concerning Darknoon is well done, the rest of the film is a post-Refn thriller (fluorescent lights, techno music, motorbike roars) that is far too manufactured to convince. The proof is that it is by escaping the artificial that the film finds a brilliant scene: the process of manufacturing drug pills, lovingly filmed in real time. Don’t do this at home.
Sylvestre Picard

THE CHEATERS ★★☆☆☆

By Louis Godbout

It was supposed to be a quiet weekend. A game of golf like they usually play, bringing together a yoga teacher, her husband and his partner in a retirement home business, which will suddenly be disrupted by the arrival of a fourth man. A mysterious stranger with a singular charisma, anything but there by chance, whose presence we will soon discover and who will confront the trio with buried truths whose emergence will not be without damage. The great idea of ​​Quebecer Louis Godbout is to make his Cheaters a strange open-air huis clos with characters trapped in this heavenly golf green where the cascading settling of scores will occupy the space and bump into invisible walls. A dark and grating fable about the appearances we give ourselves to shine in everyone’s eyes, this film nevertheless suffers from problems of rhythm or a not always mastered management of the absurd and the comedy of repetition (all the scenes with the club supervisor, a Bavarian in short pants obsessed with rules and authority…). But Christine Beaulieu’s performance, her ability to instill gentle madness in her character of a yoga teacher erases many of these flaws.

Thierry Cheze

FIRST DIDN’T LIKE

KARMAPOLICE ★☆☆☆☆

By Julien Paolini

The gesture testifies to an undeniable desire for cinema, a desire to move away from naturalism to tell the story of a Parisian district, that of Château Rouge, far from the images of Epinal and through the sole societal prism. And for this, Julien Paolini (Love Love) follows the wanderings of a cop in burnout, whose idealism has been challenged by the reality of the field and an intervention that went wrong. A man as if suspended in an attempt to rebalance his karma and whose friendship with a local figure specializing in lame trafficking will lead him closer to the shores of hell than to heavenly skies. We would like to like this film paved with strong intentions. Except that it unfortunately never manages to deploy them in a singular way, buckling under its references (from Tchao Pantin to the Safdie cinema) and undermined by overly archetypal character writing. On this terrain, Drop of gold by Romain Cogitore or the too little known The good life by Cédric Ido had hit the nail on the head.

Thierry Cheze

Eyou too

The Minion, by Alexandre Charlot and Franck Magnier

Almost legal, by Max Mauroux

Reprises

Chariots of Fire, by Hugh Hudson

The Gypsies ascend to heaven, by Emil Loteanu