Nostalgia
♥♥♥ Italian drama by Mario Martone, with Pierfrancesco Favino, Francesco Di Leva, Tommaso Ragno (1h57).
Naples is a hydra, a historic city, a maze of rotting walls, a tumultuous haven of happiness. It is a city of the sea, the wind and a thousand sins: Felice (Pierfrancesco Favino), one of his sons, returns to the places of his youth, in the district of Rione Sanita, riddled with sordid palaces, catacombs, ossuaries and churches. There, this traveler returned from Egypt, who has become a Muslim, puts down his suitcases after forty years of wandering. The Polaroids of the past come back in droves. The motorcycle trips with Orestes, her lifelong boyfriend, the frolics on the beach with the girls, the days spent with Aurora, her mother… A shadow, however, looms: that of a thug who has become the godfather neighborhood. Behind every door, behind every smile, there is worry, because Orestes, the friend, is today the racketeer, the dark sovereign of this misguided empire. While Felice comes up against these leprous houses, these centuries-worn cobblestones, these whispers that advise him to get the hell away, he broods over an old crime, of which he was a witness, an actor, but not an author, and which he needs to confess – leftover Catholic incense?
From this deaf threat, from this desire to tell, a unique, fragile and impalpable film is born. Because, as the title indicates, nostalgia colors everything: the landscape of memory is sepia, the images of the film, terracotta. In search of lost time, Italian version: death prowls. Mario Martone, the director, captures the soul of a city, tracks that of the character, and throws amazing people in the way, like Don Luigi, ninja priest who fights against the Camorra, or these street merchants, these waddling matrons, these proud teenagers. Felice, now pious, does not drink. Now, one evening, at last, he sees Orestes, face to face. The old friend asks him, roaring: “Why did you abandon me? » and offers him wine. And his cry resounds to the heavens, because Orestes, wounded, felt betrayed by his friend Judas. Martone has a sense of tragedy: he staged, at the Paris Opera, “Falstaff” and “Cavalleria Rusticana”. He has produced films whose titles alone sum up the human condition: “Love Bruised”, “Theatre of War”, “The Smell of Blood”. “Nostalgia” has the sweetness of autumn and the cruelty of a hair shirt. Mario Martone is, basically, the last Romantic. Francois Forestier
Skirmishers
♥♥♥ French historical drama by Mathieu Vadepied, with Omar Sy, Alassane Diong, Jonas Bloquet (1h40).
One of the pages of shame in the history of France: that of the Senegalese skirmishers, recruited from the schlague, treated like sub-humans, used as cannon fodder. Bakary Diallo, seeing that his son had been forcibly recruited in Senegal, went to join him in France to protect him on the battlefield in 1917. The story is powerful, the images are brutal. Mathieu Vadepied, ex-assistant of Raymond Depardon and co-director of “In therapy”, had the good idea to give the main role to Omar Sy, who brings an immense dose of emotion. We leave there with the idea that, perhaps, the Unknown Soldier is Senegalese. If he isn’t, he should. Maybe. F.F.
Omar Sy: “You can feel hatred, but you have to evacuate it”
16 years old
♥♥♥ French dramatic comedy by Philippe Lioret, with Sabrina Levoye, Teïlo Azaïs, Jean-Pierre Lorit (1h34).
Leo is the son of the boss of the hypermarket where Tarek, Nora’s brother, is a handler and soon suspected of having stolen a bottle of Château-Margaux. Which earned him a dry dismissal. Problem: Léo and Nora, both in second class, love each other madly while their two families, one in his beautiful villa, the other in public housing, hate and threaten each other. A post-attack atmosphere adds to the merciless war between these Montaigu and Capulet from a suburb of Ile-de-France. Philippe Lioret (“I’m fine, don’t worry”, “Welcome”) makes no secret of it: here he gives a contemporary version of “Romeo and Juliet”, transposes Shakespeare into supermarkets and tragedy into the cities. It’s daring, and it works. Thanks to the (almost) hidden camera of Philippe Lioret, thanks above all to the two lovers, who refuse to submit, embodied by two solar beginners: Sabrina Levoye and Teïlo Azaïs. They’re so good you’d think they weren’t playing. Jerome Garcin
The survivors
♥♥♥ French drama by Guillaume Renusson, with Denis Ménochet, Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Victoire Du Bois (1h34).
A bereavement pushes Samuel to isolate himself in the Italian Alps, where he meets a young Afghan girl who is trying to cross the border. Together they will endure the madness of identities and the hostility of nature. One survival movie, as the Americans say, to denounce the fate of migrants and the hunts of the French police, which also targets those who come to their aid. A chilling and chilling western that captures, through the silent bodies of its two heroes, their deep distress and their rage for survival. Denis Ménochet, a fragile and desperate colossus, is immense in this great political film. Xavier Leherpeur
This summer
♥♥ French dramatic comedy by Eric Lartigau, with Rose Pou Pellicer, Juliette Havelange, Marina Foïs, Gael García Bernal, Chiara Mastroianni (1h39).
Dune (Rose Pou Pellicer), 11, is going on vacation to the Landes. On the program: reunion with Mathilde, 9, to whom she teaches semantics (“Oral sex is someone who always talks about sex”) and watching horror movies. Around her, a young couple – sexuality makes her decidedly curious – Mathide’s happily divergent family and parents, bearers of a secret, who are angry. Eric Lartigau (“the Bélier Family”) adapts a graphic novel by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki and delivers an initiatory story about the loss of innocence. One more, one would be tempted to write, if the sensitive description of an age when one believes oneself indispensable to others and the range of the replicas and Rose Pou Pellicer (real presence) did not encourage us to indulgence. Sophie Grassin
Radio Metronom
♥♥ Romanian drama by Alexandru Belc, with Mara Bugarin, Serban Lazarovici, Vlad Ivanov (1h42).
The Ceausescu era, seen from the side of adolescence: one day in 1972, Ana and her friends decide to have fun at a party and write a letter to claim a little freedom, in order to pass it on on “Radio Metronom”, an underground broadcast. The project triggers the wrath of the Securitate, the nightmare begins… Adopting the look and the glaucous light of the time, Alexandru Belc plunges us into the heart of what was communist Romania: an empire of fear. Shot with a handheld camera, the film is terrifying, and, through a shattered love story, poignant. He reminds us that the filthy beast is only slumbering in the heart of Europe. F.F.
IT COMES OUT
♥♥♥ Mani Kaul Retrospective
“Uski Roti” (1970, 1h50), “Duvidha” (“The Dilemma”, 1973, 1h26), “A day before the rainy season” (1971, 1h56), “Nazar” (1990, 2h04).
Four films made between 1969 and 1990 to rediscover an Indian author whose name had somewhat faded from memory in favor of that of Satyajit Ray. No doubt because there are many points in common between these two great filmmakers. If only their taste for literary adaptation. Popular tale (“Duvidha”), adaptation of Dostoyevsky (“Nazar” after “la Douce”), play (“One day before the rainy season”) or social drama (“Uski Roti”, only original screenplay ), Mani Kaul depicts, with the refined lines of a committed painter, a frozen patriarchal society that flouts women’s rights. His use of a majority of static shots that he sometimes recomposes with a very slight camera movement, as well as his geometric and poetic image, make Kaul a modern, falsely contemplative author, whose cinema is sharp and melancholy. X.L.
Professor Yamamoto retires
♥♥♥ Japanese documentary by Kazuhiro Sôda, with Pr Yamamoto (1h59).
Vimeo – PROFESSOR YAMAMOTO RETIRES
Twelve years after “Mental”, the filmmaker finds Professor Yamamoto, a pioneer of psychiatry in the 1960s. A practice that allowed him to measure the extent of the distress of Japanese people crushed by a dehumanized society. But the retirement age has come and he has to say goodbye to his patients. Final chapter for them and for the 82-year-old practitioner. Kazuhiro Sôda films the growing specter of coming death. Not very happy, certainly, but overwhelming. X.L.
come to see
♥ Spanish dramatic comedy by Jonás Trueba, with Itsaso Arana, Francesco Carril, Irene Escolar (1h04).
Six months apart, the reunion for dinner and then for a weekend of two thirtysomething couples from Madrid. An attentive chronicler of his generation, the director of the slender and gracious “Eva in August” finds his muse Itsaso Arana and his Rohmerian approach. Here he questions our perception of things by having his characters talk about Peter Sloterdijk’s book “You must change your life” and by tackling, in off, considerations on the real of the poet Olvido García Valdés which border on caricature. After 1h04, he abandons us on a mise en abyme of the poor which undermines the vague mystery of the film and reveals the hoax. Hello nothing boo! Nicholas Schaller
The Strange Story of the Woodcutter
♥♥ Finnish dramatic comedy by Mikko Myllylahti, with Jarkko Lahti, HP Bjorkman, Livo Tuuri (1h39).
Pepe, a lumberjack in a lost town in Finland, is an eternal optimist. He goes through life like a raptor. When dramatic events cross his life, he does not change, while violence settles around him. Snow and blood, fire and good humor: a strange cocktail, directed by the poet Mikko Myllylahti, for whom this is the first film. This satirical comedy laced with unfunny humor is an attractive and intriguing UFO, between Robert Bresson (austerity) and the Coen brothers (cold irony). A discovery. F.F.
TO READ
“Top-secret. Cinema and espionage »
Under the direction of Alexandra Midal and Matthieu Orléan, Flammarion, 288 p., 35 euros.
James Bond, Jason Bourne, OSS 117, Mata Hari, Cicero and Condor: all made us dream. This richly illustrated album takes up the cinematographic history of a long underestimated genre. However, directors as prestigious as Mankiewicz, Von Sternberg, Fritz Lang, John Huston or Hitchcock have produced unforgettable films. The authors of the book give the floor to Desplechin, Assayas or Rochant, and a series of articles highlights the great moments of espionage on screen (Garbo, Smiley, Lemmy Caution). We delight. F.F.
