Official competition
- To see
Comedy by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, 1h54
To discover
Discover the “Best of the Goncourt Prize” collection
A billionaire who made his fortune in the pharmaceutical industry is in search of prestige.
Finance a bridge that would bear his name?
Ordinary.
Better to produce a film, choose a fashionable director.
He bought the rights to a Nobel Prize, offered the services of an intellectual and lesbian filmmaker and already dreams of climbing the stairs at the Cannes Film Festival.
The scenario, thick as a directory, resembles the diaries of Peter Beard.
With
Official Competition,
Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohn (
Honorary Citizen
) ferociously pinpoint the tics of an environment, expose the claim in its purest state, all to music by Erik Satie.
Satire takes aim at the black of the target.
Egos come out bruised, broken, like those trophies that the brilliant redhead shoves into a grinder.
Penélope Cruz, a veritable tornado of egocentrism, has a field day, sleeps with the tycoon's daughter, practices ridiculous stretching exercises.
Vanity will have the last word.
This is crazy good.
In a perfect world, the film would be reimbursed by Social Security.
IN
Read alsoOur review of the film
Official competition
: the bonfire of the vain
Variety
- To see
Variety is the name of a cinema in New York.
A special kind of Times Square room, like the one where Robert de Niro takes Cybill Shepherd in
Taxi Driver
.
It shows pornographic films, with evocative titles (
La Roulette du sex
,
Le Diable au corps
).
In 1984, 42nd Street was not yet an artery for tourists in love with
Lion King
and other
musicals
.
Long before David Simon's series,
The Deuce
, Bette Gordon showed in
Variety,
unpublished in France
,
a disreputable but very cinematic district with its red and green neon signs.
It features Christine, a young and pretty blonde from Michigan, hired as a cashier by José (Luis Guzman, future actor
in Brian de Palma's
Impasse ) in this cinema whose hall resounds with moans.
Christine starts following a client, a businessman named Louie.
The Hitchcockian blonde reverses the roles here.
The voyeurist, that's her.
Without moralism, Bette Gordon diverts the male gaze.
In this film about desire and fantasy, Nan Goldin plays a bartender.
She was a set photographer and her pictures are exhibited in Paris in a new gallery, the Paris Cinéma Club.
ES
La Ruche
- We can see
Drama by Blerta Basholli, 1h23
Between March 1998 and June 1999, the Kosovo war between Albanian separatists and Serbian forces killed more than 13,000 people.
And nearly 3,000 missing.
The mountainside village of Krushë was one of the most appalling massacres of the conflict.
This martyr locality is the theater of
La Ruche
, a modest portrait of a widow who defies the patriarchy of her conservative hamlet.
Inspired by a true story, the film won three prizes in the international section of the American festival of Sundance.
Director Blerta Basholli, trained at New York University, weaves a delicate film, a twilight eulogy of female resilience, like its heroine, played by Yllka Gashi.
The story recounts the monotony of a life in suspense, made of waiting through the repetition of kitchen gestures.
From this sum of little nothings, compliments and rarefied emotions spring life, hope, the energy to move forward.
CJ
Read alsoOur review of
La Ruche
: post-war women
Elizabeth, singular gaze(s)
- We can see
Documentary by Roger Michell, 1h29
“It is so heavy
, explains the queen about her crown,
that it is impossible for me to lower my head.”
The phrase can be understood figuratively.
The whirlwind of images in
Elizabeth: Regard(s) singulier(s)
reminds us that the sovereign has maintained the course of royalty without weakening for seven decades.
The English celebrate this anniversary this Thursday, during the platinum jubilee.
Roger Michell, who died in September 2021 at the age of 65, pays tribute to him in his own way in this film nourished by a large number of archives.
There is no voiceover, excerpts from skilfully edited reports or documentaries are enough.
Extracts from
Cleopatra
with Liz Taylor or from the series
The Crown
slip on the screen, rock and or pop resound on images of official ceremonies.
The excess is not far away, the homage borders on irreverence.
That's probably how you can tell he's English.
BP
