What are we watching this weekend? Ryan Reynolds in the Cold War, a crazy series, a Rappeneau classic…

Cinema, streaming, VOD, TV… Find the Première selection every Friday.

The film in theaters: Three Farewells by Isabel Coixet

Love and death in the streets of Rome. Don’t watch the horrible trailer for the film, a sort of Airbnb postcard for tourists on Vespas with food restaurants and vegan neighborhoods. These Three Farewells are better than that. A couple leaves. Marta (Alba Rorhwacher) tries to relearn how to live alone. She embraces new energy before the revelation of her illness shakes her certainties. However – and this is precisely the beauty of this story – this shaking is not seen as a tragedy where fate would break all creative energy but on the contrary offers an impulse. A life lesson for this back to school in short. The Spanish Isabel Coixet abandons all pathos without repressing the outpouring of feelings. The modesty, the humor, the finesse of the staging impose a gentleness as unexpected as it is salutary.

What’s new at the cinema this week

The film streaming: Mayday by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley

With Mayday, the duo Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (Game Night, Dungeons & Dragons…) confirm their taste for comedy that goes off the rails. In the midst of the Cold War, Ryan Reynolds, an American pilot in distress, finds his improbable salvation with Kenneth Branagh, a former KGB agent fascinated by Top Gun and McDonald’s. Between fights, crazy chases and sometimes devastating gags, the film unfolds a very playful and fun road movie, slipping in a few barbs about imperialism and soft power along the way. A little too long, but devilishly entertaining.

Stream Mayday on Apple TV

The series: La Mesías

Before seeing La bola negra at the cinema in December, immerse yourself in this mini-series from the Spanish duo Los Javis: at the heart of the story, a mother convinced of having received a divine mission, who leads her children into sectarian isolation. Brilliant casting, great family drama with a queer and pop aesthetic… La Mesías is a fascinating labyrinth that questions spirituality, the power of images and the need for collectiveness. Unmissable.

Watch La Mesías streaming on MUBI

The film on VOD: Romeria by Carla Simón

After Summer 93 and Our Suns, the Spanish Carla Simón continues with Romeria – which marked her entry into competition at the Cannes Film Festival – her intimate and meticulous work on family memory. The difference is that here, for the first time, it does not focus on childhood but follows a 20-year-old young woman who, between memories told in whispers and awkward silences, will try to reconstruct the story of her parents. And to break the taboos that seem to stifle their own. Romeria seduces by the way of making us experience the story through the feelings of its heroines and of captivating us by its floating rhythm which advances like a memory that we try to grasp. A gesture of great delicacy.

Watch Romeria on VOD on Première max

The short film: Pauline Asservie by Charline Bourgeois-Taquet

Before La Vie d’une femme (which comes out this Wednesday, carried by a masterful Léa Drucker), there was Les Amours d’Anaïs (2021), the first feature film by Charline Bourgeois-Taquet. And before Les Amours d’Anaïs, in 2018 there was this Pauline enslaved, of which it was an extension. The story of a young woman who, on vacation in the countryside with a friend, desperately waits for news from the married man with whom she has an affair until she is unable to do anything other than watch for the arrival of a text message. A playful variation around love obsession in which the director succeeds in making thrilling a situation where on paper, boredom dominates, helped by the swirling liveliness of the acting of Anaïs Demoustier who plays the title role.

Watch Pauline Enslaved streaming on Arte.TV

The classic: The Savage by Jean-Paul Rappeneau (1975)

The recent death of Jean-Paul Rappeneau deserves a little exoticism in his memory. Let’s start again. “… Jean-Paul Rappeneau is one of the rare filmmakers who, like the Ophuls of Madame de… or the Truffaut of La Peau Douce, identifies with his female characters…” So spoke Catherine Deneuve in the columns of L’Express on August 4, 1975. With Le Sauvage she was filming her second film with the filmmaker after La vie de château (1966). Le Sauvage features a solitary adventurer (Yves Montand) voluntarily exiled on a small island in South America, soon disturbed by a volcanic blonde (Cathou of course). As always with Rappeneau, everything is a matter of rhythm (the long time between each of his shoots is inversely proportional to the pace of his characters on screen!) It is also necessary to note here the care taken with the colorimetry. Thus Deneuve’s blondeness literally pierces the frame with its blinding rays. The late cinematographer Pierre Lhomme was a true painter of film. Guaranteed change of scenery.

Watch Le Sauvage Friday evening on France 5 and the next day in streaming on France.TV