Each month, the members of the editorial staff offer you their favorite film during the review of the month, the one you had to discover at all costs in theaters or in your living room (SVOD releases, e-cinema, etc.). Check out each editor’s picks below. The Blue of the Mirror for the month of May 2022.
The choice of Thomas Périllon
SCHOOL AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Pawo Choyning Dorji
Imbued with spirituality and beautiful values such as respect for nature, The school at the end of the world hollowly tells the societal conflicts of Bhutan through its universal story overflowing with humanity, which does not fail to question everyone around our place in the world and the paths to achieve happiness. Sublimated by his shots of the vast wild and snowy peaks, this journey of a teacher forced to (temporarily) put his aspirations as a singer on hold resonates as a reflection of our individualistic era.
Florent Boutet’s choice
LIMBO by Ben Sharrock
Passed by Cannes 2020, Limbo tells the story of Omar, a talented and recognized musician from Syria, awaiting administrative regularization to enter British territory. This melancholic portrait in an austere purgatory in the middle of nowhere, is a mixture of cold humor and heartbreaking moments, reminders of the conflict and struggles that run through Syria’s recent history. Ben Sharrock overwhelms with the quality of his writing, especially with his characters with shattered dreams, gathered at the gates of the West.
The choice of FX Thuaud
IL BUCO by Michelangelo Frammartino
Calabria, 1961, a team of speleologists explores the Abisso del Bifurto. Frammartino deploys a whole cinema of extreme acuity to tell a double interior adventure, that of the scientists whose path patiently awaits its conclusion and that of a shepherd whose life of contemplation seems satiated. A quivering vein, a mocking balloon sucked into the bowels of the earth, a paper Kennedy illuminated by a torch, so many details to celebrate, with the same gesture, life and its underside, the taming of defeat, learning about finitude. We come out of this film strangely peaceful.
The choice of Jean-Christophe Manuceau
CRIMES OF THE FUTURE by David Cronenberg
Using the title of one of his first films (in this case a medium-length film from 1970), David Cronenberg returns to the vein “body horror”eight years later Maps to the Stars. Set in an indeterminate future in which the human race undergoes physical mutations, The Crimes of the Future sees an “artist”, helped by his assistant, stage the removal of his tumors, previously tattooed, as part of happenings. Destabilizing, sometimes uncomfortable, always intriguing, this unexpected new opus by the Canadian maestro should not attract crowds in theaters, but aficionados will be delighted as he revisits here the major themes of all his work.
The choice of Pierre Nicolas
IL BUCO by Michelangelo Frammartino
What is trying to tell Il Buco holds less in its twists than in the emotion and its philosophical proposal. Depth, surface, narrowness, immensity, life, death. All these elements are filmed with the same mystical and topographic look, specific to Frammartino’s cinema. A cyclical vision of the world, where the movement that governs the passage of time and its repetition – as were the seasons and the four “times” of The quattro volte – rules the world far more than any other force.
The choice of Eleanor Oldwood
NITRAM by Justin Kurzel
It is in a total absence of pathos that Justin Kurzel therefore approaches the story of the so-called Nitram for playing with fire as a child, living modestly with his parents while childhood has long since left his face. Texan comedian Caleb Landry Jones, winner of the Best Actor award at the last Cannes Film Festival, modestly puts on the costume of a young man who runs on antidepressants to hide latent trauma, following the initiative of his mother (Judy Davis ) not daring to see the reality of her son’s plight. When the main question of the film remains: why; the real question around this interest for the bloodthirsty criminal, for human madness, for all the Charles Mansons and the Eric Harrises and Dylan Klebolds, is to try to understand: who is at the origin of the tragedy? Who is this person really, and what is his background?
Whether Nitram is an obvious scathing criticism of Australia’s gun licensing, it also sensitively addresses what happens when psychological distress goes unaddressed. The criminals are very often the left behind, they are those who do not see any possible help, those who have been abandoned, the miserable, as Victor Hugo wrote in his novel: “life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty are battlefields that have their hero, dark hero”. Nitram is disturbing because it does not point the finger at the culprit, which moved us, and made us laugh. He points a finger at a system, and its collateral damage.
The choice of Victor Van De Kadsye
CRIMES OF THE FUTURE by David Cronenberg
Eight years after attacking the world of Hollywood in Maps to the stars, David Cronenberg returns with a new fable about creation. Transforming body-horror into a fascinating reflection on body-art, the legendary Canadian filmmaker has lost none of his visual impact. Maybe the film turns out to be “minor”, not as strong as are Cosmospolis Where Videodrome, it does not prevent that it is always galvanizing to see a scenario writer go until the end of his step; embarking the spectator in a nebulous universe where strangeness and humor mingle (excellent performance by Kristen Stewart).
The choice of Malo Morcel
Mikhaël Hers is back, four years after the very beautiful and subtle Amandafor a new lap. Passengers of the night is anchored in the 80s and it is with precision in the details of its staging that the atmosphere of this era oozes from its frames. There he performs a tribute as well as a gentle and tender parallel to a specific branch of French cinematography with the very handsome Rohmer, Full moon nightsand its lead actress, Pascale Ogier, which perfectly immerse and blend with its shattered night passengers. The voices mingle, the paths intertwine with accuracy in a single objective: to learn to live with each other in a collective mutual aid.