What to see in theaters
THE EVENT
INISHERIN’S BANSHEE ★★★★☆
By Martin McDonagh
The essential
On an Irish island, in 1923, two former friends are locked in an absurd estrangement. Martin McDonagh re-forms the duo of Kisses from BrugesColin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, and signs a very black, very funny fable.
For his first film shot in Ireland, Martin McDonagh stages the absurd quarrel between two friends Pádraic and Colm (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson), on a fictional island off the coast of Ireland, in 1923. A feud that begins when Colm decides, overnight, not to speak to his old friend anymore An incomprehensible and brutal decision whose consequences the film will examine, first in the heart of the brave Pádraic, completely taken by surprise, then within the entire small island community
From a very thin argument, which assumes its artificiality, McDonagh develops a comical, cruel reflection on the human condition and existential despair. In the distance, the muffled echoes of the civil war which is tearing the country apart underlines the metaphorical dimension of the estrangement between the two ex-friends. Dark, quite desperate, but also very funny, the film owes a lot to its actors, all very subtle. Gleeson embodies his character as a taciturn music lover with great depth, while Colin Farrell undoubtedly finds here the best role of his career, passing brilliantly, from bonhomie to stupefaction, then to absolute despair.
Frederic Foubert
Read the full review
FIRST LOVED
TO LIVE ★★★☆☆
By Oliver Hermanus
Nobel Prize in Literature, author of Remains of the day, Kazuo Ishiguro builds a bridge between Japan, where he was born, and the United Kingdom, where he has lived since childhood. It was he who initiated and scripted this remake of To live (1952), by Akira Kurosawa, and chose to relocate to his country this magnificent portrait of a small bureaucrat who, learning that he suffers from an incurable disease, embarks on a project that could give meaning to the few months left to live: cleaning up a vacant lot and building a kindergarten. Ishiguro and director Oliver Hermanus draw a parallel here between Japanese and British societies, the idea of a strict social order that would stifle the individual. The film depicts this corseted world very nicely and succeeding the great Takashi Shimura, Bill Nighy delivers an impressive minimalist, mineral performance, contrary to his usual baby-boomer rock’n’roll antics. A lesson in humanism and elegance.
Frederic Foubert
Read the full review
HINTERLAND ★★★☆☆
By Stefan Ruzowitzky
Oscar winner in 2008 with The Forgers set at the heart of the Second World War, the Austrian Stefan Ruzowitzky is interested here in the period located at the end of the first, after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the footsteps of soldiers prisoners who return to a country they no longer recognize, one of them, resuming his job as a policeman, begins to investigate a series of murders of which veterans are precisely the victims. The filmmaker mixes here thriller and portrait of a world that the tragic cocktail between rising unemployment and nationalist impulses will lead 20 years later to Hitler’s madness. All in a daring artistic gesture, the streets of Vienna recreated digitally on a green background, in an atmosphere evoking the expressionist cinema of those years and creating an atmosphere that is both disturbing and stifling, the perfect setting for his story.
Thierry Cheze
JOYLAND ★★★☆☆
By Saim Sadiq
It is the story of a Pakistani (Ali Junejo), cramped in his couple, imprisoned in a patriarchal family and outdated laws. We tell him to settle down. Become a father, find a job, “become manly”. He executes. Find a little job in a cabaret. Meet a striking trans dancer Biba (Alina Khan). And fall under his spell. Saim Sadiq films, without any demonstrative effect, the banality of a love affair, the first emotions, the long dilemmas, the taboos, the return of local customs. Love is political in Sadiq. Political and melancholic. It weaves impossible links, fixes characters and reveals freedoms. He also dances, laughs, colors, bleeds. Makes the difference. First Pakistani feature film selected at Cannes and Jury Prize Un Certain Regard, joyland is about to apply for the 2023 Oscars. For the best.
Estelle Aubin
Read the full review
THE PASSENGER ★★★☆☆
By Héloïse Pelloquet
This is the story of love at first sight that arises in the life of Chiara, a forty-year-old (Cécile de France, radiant), happy and fulfilled in the couple she has formed for 20 years with a fisherman with whom she also shares the job. The one – reciprocal – that she feels for Maxence (Félix Lefebvre, amazing), 25 years younger than her, whom she will try to resist before the impulses of the heart overwhelm the dikes of reason. Heloïse Pelloquet recounts this passion that tries to ignore when people say the small island where Chiara lives and where everyone knows everyone with a great sense of the romantic and a claimed sensuality in realistic love scenes but never voyeuristic where the female gaze bursts full screen. A thrilling debut feature right down to its epilogue that is anything but conventional.
Thierry Cheze
UNICORN WARS ★★★☆☆
By Alberto Vazquez
Don’t let parents be fooled by the shimmering colors and adorable 2D designs: Unicorn Wars is not made for children, and the most sensitive adults could also leave feathers there. Alberto Vasquez (Psychonauts) signs a unique animated tale, at the crossroads of Care Bears, Full Metal Jacket and D’Apocalypse Now. It is about a merciless war between cubs and unicorns, and about a sacred book claiming that whoever drinks the blood of the last horned equine will become a perfect being. The film questions all over the influence of mythological stories, religion, military propaganda or masculinity. Incredibly violent and dark. Not for everyone, but everyone would be well advised to take a look.
Francois Leger
BY HEARTS ★★★☆☆
By Benoit Jacquot
Two artists. Two ways of approaching the texts and thereby their profession. Benoît Jacquot went to Avignon to film Isabelle Huppert and Fabrice Luchini during rehearsals and performances of their shows, finding a way to make them talk to each other from a distance. And if it is mainly aimed at insiders, this documentary shines with its ability to grasp the mysteries of a gesture that remains at the bottom of the craft and the intelligence of the confidences of these masters of the game.
Thierry Cheze
Find these films near you thanks to Première Go
FIRST TO MODERATELY LOVED
CARAVAVAGE ★★☆☆☆
By Michele Placido
four years later 7 minutes passed unnoticed, Michele Placido is back for a film destined to have more echo: a biopic of Caravaggio (Riccardo Scamarcio, inspired), centered on the end of his life when at the beginning of the 17th century, accused of murder, he s took refuge in Naples hoping to obtain the grace of the Church. It has been 50 years since the filmmaker dreamed of devoting a film to him. Mastering his subject right down to his fingertips, he has the brilliant idea of going through the prism of a fictional character, an emissary from the Pope charged with investigating him, and concentrating on his works, their inspirations and their subversive aspect to tell the man he was. Alas, this gesture is damaged by dialogues which come each time to highlight what it gives to see. This pedagogical obsession encloses the film in a classicism and by extension an absence of audacity which fundamentally contradicts its subject.
Thierry Cheze
PREMIERE DIDN’T LIKE
M3GAN ★☆☆☆☆
By Gerard Johnstone
A brilliant robotics engineer invents a doll with artificial intelligence that she gives to her 9-year-old niece, orphan of her parents who died in a tragic car accident. A doll who – oh surprise! – will escape its creator. Everything – down to the nods to chucky Where terminator – is phoned in this new Blumhouse production, a sort of failed episode of black-mirror, seeming only obsessed with its effectiveness but never with the ambition to give birth to the beginning of the beginning of originality. Until his final plan on which we could have bet from the start.
Thierry Cheze
And also
choir of rockers, by Ida Techer and Luc Bricault
The covers
suzhou river by Lou Ye
The Banshees of Inisherin, Vivre, Joyland: New in cinemas this week