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Valérie Lemercier as the title heroine in "Aline - The Voice of Love"
Photo: Phil Loftus / ddp images / Capital Pictures
"Aline - The Voice of Love"
The biography is a popular genre. Most of the stories are about well-known people who had to overcome obstacles on the way to success or who fell victim to their fame. None of this in Valérie Lemercier's film "Aline - The Voice of Love", which is based on the life of the Canadian singer Celine Dion. Bright sunshine wherever you look. The extended family, into which Aline was born as her parents' 14th child, appears like a nest, a bit cramped, but very warm. The rise of the singer to star, which began in her teenage years, appears to be a collective effort by the whole clan.
The chutzpah with which the French Lemercier whistles about the rules and conventions of the genre, her refusal to dwell on dark phases in the life of her heroine, is admirable. »Aline« is a good mood spectacle that lasts around two hours and sprints through the decades at top speed. The film even treats the singer's greatest triumph with her hit "My Heart Will Go On" for the blockbuster "Titanic" in an astonishingly casual manner. One could almost consider it megalomaniac that Lemercier plays the title heroine herself in all phases of life, even though she is already 57 years old. Especially since she doesn't look very much like Dion. But she does this with a lot of charm, the necessary portion of humor and nothing can stop her from letting the beautiful appearance triumph over reality. away
December 23rd in the cinema.
Lars-Olav Beier
"Drive My Car"
The best pictures of the Japanese cinema director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi look like particularly successful everyday photographs.
At the end of a theater rehearsal in the park, two young actresses who were barely stressed out fall into each other's arms, relieved;
during a car trip a man and a woman keep their lit cigarettes out of the sunroof.
Hamaguchi creates a cool magic out of barren, laconic scenes, which makes his film "Drive My Car" a heart-rending event.
The film, based on a story by Haruki Murakami, tells of a successful artist, of jealousy, creativity and the power of love.
The hero is called Yusuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima), is an actor and director - and in the prologue he catches his young wife, a screenwriter, having sex with someone else. A little later it is a stupid coincidence that the woman suffers a cerebral haemorrhage and dies. When Yusuke staged the Anton Chekhov play "Uncle Vanya" for a festival in Hiroshima two years later, he listened to the tapes on which his wife had spoken the text during her lifetime. On the daily commute between his accommodation and the theater rehearsals, he has to be chauffeured by an initially extremely taciturn professional driver. And he meets a guy again in whom he thinks he recognizes the lover of his dead wife.
The director Hamaguchi does not portray the story as a tortured artist drama, but as a wonderfully poetic, cheerful and always surprising story of a return to life.
Quietly and with a playing time of three hours, it shows the rapprochement between the cultural snob Yusuke and the initially rather rude driver Misaki (Toko Miura), who gradually entrust their secrets to each other.
"Drive My Car" is Japan's contribution to the latest American Oscar race.
With consistency reminiscent of Chekhov, Hamaguchi practices the art of patient and precise human observation.
And is characterized by an elegance, warmth and clarity of thought that you rarely experience in the cinema.
away
December 23rd in the cinema.
Wolfgang Höbel
"Matrix Resurrections"
After almost two decades, Keanu Reeves aka Neo is back in "The Matrix". In the film »Matrix Resurrections«, the fourth part of the cinema spectacle originally planned as a trilogy, the hero does not fight and suffer not to save various worlds - but for love. She belongs to the strongest character in the film: Carrie-Anne Moss in the role of Neos from earlier "The Matrix" episodes of tried and tested comrade Trinity. It is enchantingly beautiful and elegant, partly newly constructed magic worlds, into which the hero ends up in his new adventure. You can see giant machine insects buzzing around and a wooden pile structure being dismantled in the middle of a paradisiacal jungle and water landscape.
There are numerous kickboxing and kung fu and bone breaking duels in Lana Wachowski's film.
You admire incredibly well-choreographed choreographs and indulgent scenes of the battle of nations, which sometimes remind you of Hieronymus Bosch and sometimes of pompous fantasy quark.
But as great as this film is to look at, unfortunately it has so little to tell.
And for what reason exactly who beats at whom, shoots or fires grenades, does not seem to be particularly significant.
In numerous flashbacks, this film conjures up images and encounters from the first »Matrix« works and is completely enough.
Pure retro cult.
away
December 23rd in the cinema.
Wolfgang Höbel
"Being the Ricardos"
In Hollywood in the 1950s, many stars were suspected of being communists. So does the actress Lucille Ball (1911 to 1989), who is played by Nicole Kidman in the film "Being The Ricardos". Ball, whose husband Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem) came from Cuba, rose to become one of the most popular television comedians in the USA with her show "I Love Lucy".
Aaron Sorkin's film describes five days in 1952. In which the heroine has to defend herself against allegations of communism, transform her fun show about married life into a TV sitcom - and save her marriage by saving her husband, a full-time musician, also makes a television star.
In the film, Ball and Arnaz seem like an amusing mistake of love: Kidman is a stiff and energetic perfectionist, Bardem a grumpy macho with irresistible charm.
On Amazon Prime Video.
Wolfgang Höbel
