Val: a crazy document on Val Kilmer, damaged but magnificent star
The actor of Top Gun and the Doors, who died at the age of 65, was engaged in Val, a unique and unique self -portrait.
To remember Val kilmerdied on April 1 from pneumonia, you can plunge back into the most significant roles of his career. But also watch the documentary Valvefrom Leo Scott and Ting Poo, which had been presented in 2021 at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is available in VOD (especially on Première Max), as well as on Prime Video but only in VF.
Rent or buy VOD Val on Première Max
We hoped Top Gun 2 At Cannes Film Festivalbut it was ultimately the best enemy of Maverick who landed: Iceman, alias Val kilmerhero of Valvescoring documentary that wiped the plaster of the new “Cannes Premier” section. And it’s also behind the scenes of Top Gunin 1985, that the film begins: Val Kilmer, 25 years old, shirtless, Apollo’s physics, Sharm and brave, struts with his friends actors in front of the camera: ” We want more women, more wine, more drugs, more herpes, more fun and … fewer Tom Cruise! »»
Flash-Forward 35 years later. Kilmer, tired, slowed down, torpedoed by throat cancer, painfully speaking in a robotic voice after a tracheotomy, now maintains his wilted legend by hidden in signing sessions for fans of Batman, or during projections outdoors Tombstonein the depths of the desert. He sometimes does that until exhaustion, until we miss falling into apples, until you vomit in a trash can in the Comic Con. It is only the shadow of the skull idol he was in the 80s. Definitely the anti-Tom Cruise.
If we can see these incredible images today, it is because Val Kilmer has the distinction of having spent his life filming, from an early age, pushed by a kind of scopic and narcissistic drive. Armed with a camera, he documented everything in his life: his games with his two brothers when they were kids and dreamed of cinema, his first steps as an apprentice actor at the Julliard School in New York, his beginnings in the theater (where we meet Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon, other young eightiesin a fabulous snapshot of our VHS years), his family life, his walks around the world, the demo bands shot to convince Kubrick or Scorse to hire him, the filming of glory (Willow,, Doors, Batman Forever…) And those of the lose (Dr. Moreau Island).
Sleeping up for years in a warehouse, these maddening archives have been entrusted to the directors Leo Scott and Ting Poo, who intersect them in the images of the Val Kilmer today. This one offers here a Full Access to his memories, his joys and his regrets, telling the story of a ” magic life “Damaged by the disease, a painful divorce, and a lot of errors of judgment-the actor had, in the 1990s, the reputation of being one of the most breeding divas of US cinema. Kilmer is now damaged, out of circuit, but is nevertheless flamboyant, of a crazy charm, in her neo-hippies super flashy outfits, manufacturing scrapbooks on the ground of his living room, supported by his children, who seem to love him-his son Jack lends his voice so that Val can tell his life in the first person, in a fairly upset generational witness.
We feel the directors that are sometimes almost overwhelmed by the madness and the praiseworthy miles, seeking a center of gravity to this incredible human and emotional matter, hesitating between the hagiography of a survivor, the empathetic home-movie and the hallucinated cinephile document. Their model, we imagine it, is Jim & Andywho mixed meditative portrait of a leaching jim Carrey and walking in the Foldingues Rushs of Man On The Moon.
But if Valve (The film) is imperfect, Val (man) is sublime: affirming here his nature as an actor and absolute bohemian, enter Until the end of the nails, a life member of the great Hollywood circus, reminding the world that he was Iceman, Batman, Doc Holliday, Jim Morrison, offering for posterity his body smashed to the god entertainment. Maybe Tom Cruise, basically, understands it better than anyone.
Valvefrom Leo Scott and Ting Poo. With Val Kilmer, Jack Kilmer… trailer:
