All the great filmmakers (or almost) started by making short. Little seen because too often confined to a purely professional exploitation, reduced to the role of business card or passport to the feature, the short film is an art in itself which has its language and its titles to glory. Of all the events that honor it, the Short Film Festival is the most sharing. Its goal ? Show and make accessible to anyone who wishes a rich and eclectic catalog of films from all eras and nationalities. Sponsored by actor Bastien Bouillon (freshly crowned with the César for best hope for “La Nuit du 12”), the event is being held this year from March 15 to 21 (info on lafeteducourt.com). On this occasion, “l’Obs” offers you three short films to see for free on our site which will be revealed to you until Friday, at the rate of one title per day.
Day 1: “Someone Extraordinary” by Monia Chokri (2014)
Actress with Xavier Dolan, in “Les Amours imaginaires” and “Laurence Anyways”, or in the recent “Falcon Lake” by Charlotte Le Bon, the Canadian Monia Chokri proved to be a talented young director with “My Brother’s Wife and “Babysitter”. Two very different comedies with a modern and unique tone, a quality already demonstrated by his short film “Someone d’extraordinaire”. Monia Chokri sticks to the bewildered spleen of Sarah (Magalie Lepine Blondeau, girl next door mixed with Droopy and Pierre Richard) who wakes up one morning in a bed and a house that she does not recognize, comes face to face with the mistress of the place, mother at home of a teenager with whom she would have slept, before to find a group of girlfriends for a bachelor party that turns to settling scores.
The sequel after the ad
Imagine “Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown” revisited by Lena Dunham’s Quebec sister (the “Girls” series) and you will have an even too reductive idea of this first essay which opposes the beauty of futile deviations to comfort (and conformism ) hypocritical ready-made opinions. If we find traces of the cinema that Chokri loves there – the taste for skirmishes and the comedy of Maïwenn’s embarrassment, the camera on the shoulder and the jump-cuts like “Husbands and wives” by Woody Allen -, “Someone ‘un d’extraordinary’ contrasts with the sharp freshness of his gaze.
