Finding the successor to
Coda
, the first film from a platform to win an Oscar for best feature film, will not be easy for Apple TV+.
After the softy
The Greatest Beer Run Ever
, here is
Raymond & Ray
, filmmaker Rodrigo Garcia's “road trip”.
A missed opportunity despite its star duo, Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke.
They camp two half-brothers, to whom their perverse father practically gave the same first name.
His death forces them to meet again.
The hated parent demanded that his sons dig his own grave.
Beginning as an odyssey on the asphalt, this double portrait turns into an eccentric and dreamlike drama when the brothers arrive in the cemetery, shovel in hand, and discover a sensual stepmother and other hidden brothers, including twins acrobats.
Repressed trauma
After starting his career as a cameraman for Alfonso Cuaron (
Roma)
who produced this independent film, the son of the novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez draws the portrait of
"quadras whom their neglectful and mistreating patriarch did not allow to become men".
“His disappearance opens the door to maturity and forgiveness for them”
, deciphers the filmmaker.
The director of the costume drama
Alfred Nobbs
and several episodes of the cult series
Six Feet Under
applies the codes of mismatched buddy comedy to this brotherly duo.
A former drug addict and unemployed laborer, Ray (Hawke) is an impulsive charmer, trumpeter passionate about jazz.
Raymond (McGregor) is a businessman in the middle of a third divorce.
Seemingly more serene and a voice of reason, this control freak with numerous obsessive-compulsive disorders is a volcano on the verge of exploding.
“What fascinates me about the family unit is that we never escape our common history. Even if life separates us, a sibling cannot completely dissolve. Whether you like them or not, they remain in your life,”
notes Rodrigo Garcia, who studies the ramifications of repressed anger and trauma on his protagonists.
It is in these moments of shared reminiscences that
Raymond & Ray
emerges from its lethargy.
In their childish bickering, Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke reveal the children that their respective protagonists may have been.
But by focusing only on this tandem to the exclusion of the other members of this clan who apparently knew a more open-minded patriarch than them, this chronicle eliminates the rough edges that could have allowed him to stand out from the crowd.