Just before darkness falls. French documentary by Jean Pierre Larcher (40 minutes).
Paul Morand, still grieving the death of Cocteau a few weeks prior, wrote to Jacques Chardonne: “Spending nearly two hours with a live dead, a dead full of all its restless grace and its gaiety while its body teems in worms, while its spirit intact, teems wits, is a new ordeal for our time “Just before Nightfall”, the documentary directed and written by Jean-Pierre Larcher Michel Bouquet is already weak and can be seen soliloquizing at the Grand Hotel de Cabourg, reading excerpts from “Rhinoceros”, “The King Is Dying”, or “Caligula”, or even “The Fall”. Camus.
His sometimes scattered reflections reveal his passion for theater, where men can “get an answer of their troubles”. Truth be told, we would prefer more modest editing and filming, as well as a camera that can stay put, such as the interview of Pierre-Andre Boutang, Arte. Jean-Pierre Larcher makes matters more complicated with these images of ruins, empty countryside, and the black waves lifting the ocean. It would have been better to include more extracts from films or plays. We are thankful to him for this post-mortem interview. He said the final words of Beranger, who was the only person to not metamorphose into rhino in “Rhinoceros”, “I am the last man and I will stay so until the end!” I won’t give up! He fought until the end.
Secret ceremony. French drama by Tatiana Becquet Genel (1h20).
Tatiana Becquet Genel’s feature film “Secret Ceremony” is not worthy of so much indulgence. Bouquet’s participation in the film is only anecdotal. It took only a few minutes. He reads a text that is almost meaningless. It borders on abuse of the elderly. It’s the entire film that is dark and deceptively deep. The images of a lawyer who is made guilty by her client’s suicide are reminiscent of the end of studies exercise for a film school student, who would not have seen a Marguerite Duras film but would have heard a talk. Jacques Nerson
Macedonian drama by Blerta basholli, featuring Ylka Gaashi, Cun Lejci, Aurita Aushi (1:23).
Only women are left to oversee the rest of the world in the chaos caused by the collapse of Yugoslavia. Fahrije is the only one who survives because of her honey production. She launches a community project, making and selling ready-to-eat meals. But she is confronted by violence from an older age. This violence comes from tradition, stupidity and patriarchy. The tragic contrast between the need to emancipate women and the lack of men who return truckloads from Pristina’s front is what sets the film’s price. Blerta Basholli was a New York-trained Kosovar director. For a rare work of strength, honey and war, emotion, history, suffering, and hope all come together. Francois Forestier
Franco-Romanian-Greek drama by Christos Massalas, with Elsa Lekakou, Foivos Papadopoulos, Stathis Apostolou (1h37).
Escaped from the clutches and violence of the underworld, a dancer seeks refuge in Broadway, an abandoned cultural center in Athens. Broadway is home to a group of pickpockets led her lover. They decide to dress a man whose head has been put on a price and make him a woman to lure the pigeons into their street show. Beautiful portrait of the abandoned gathered around queer values in face of macho violence, the Greek capitalist slump and music by Gabriel Yared that evokes “Carmina Burana” This is the film that shows true filmmakers: he brings us along with him, with elegance and inspiration for each shot, which unfortunately, is missing in the screenplay. Nicholas Schaller
Argentinian-Spanish comedy, Mariano Cohn, Gaston Duprat, Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas. Oscar Martinez (1h54).
A wealthy Spanish businessman wants to make a lasting impression before his death. He funds a film featuring the best local actors: Penelope Cruz, an award-winning avant-garde director (and multi-award winning), and Antonio Banderas (and the star of Hollywood) as well as Oscar Martinez (a theater actor). According to Billy Wilder comedy is about tempo. This film’s satire of an actor’s all-ego, produced by Cruz and Banderas in automatic self-mockery mode, lacks that quality. The problem is not the script, but the staging of the Argentinian directors at “Honorary Citizen” is. They try to be distant and have a tongue-in-cheek approach, much like Ruben Ostlund (“The Square”)), but they are unable to create a rhythm and style that will allow them to squander their murderous ideas and stutter in awkward silences. . N.S.
Clovis Cornillac’s French comedy, Clovis Cornillac with Clovis Cornillac and Alice Pol, Manon Lémoine (1h37).
Pierre, an adult child, is protected from the modern world’s vicissitudes from an early age. He discovers in his forties that he was adopted. He meets a busy woman while searching for his biological mother. She is willing to assist him. Pierre starts to lose his color and become dematerialized, despite many failures. Clovis Cornillac, the actor director, dares to do the poetic and the extraordinary in this melancholic and tangy fable. He is modest and sincere as he accompany his mirror character in this story full of charm. Including the roles of Alice Pol, the witty actress, and Myriam Boyer, the outstanding actress. Xavier Leherpeur
American drama by Bette Gardner, with Sandy McLeod and Will Patton (1983, 1h40).
This 1983 French film, which was unpublished, is about a beautiful blonde woman who, in order to pay her rent and find a job as cashier at a porn movie. It is a quasi-documentary look into New York’s underworld and its disturbing portrait about a woman who resists the power of the gaze. Tom DiCillo is the future director of “It’s Turning in Manhattan”, while Nan Goldin, Nan Goldin’s photographer, provides lighting. N.S.
Italian drama by Pier Paolo Pasolini with Paolo Bonacelli and Giorgio Cataldi (1975, 1:57).
The film was preceded by scandalous scents in 1975 and a reputation for being a cursed work (Pasolini was killed two months prior to its release). It was censored cut, banned, shouted at, praised, and then recut. What is the film worth, almost half a century later? The revolting scenes Pasolini directs (rape, tasting of excrement and torture) are very unsettling, even though Pasolini has reverted to the marquis’ work by placing the action in the short-lived republic Salo under Mussolini. While the message (horror in bourgeois society, consumer homosexuality, reifications of beings), is acceptable, the theatrical representation of sex with a hot Iron, enucleations and mutilation to the tongue is not. The spectacle of abjection can be described as an abject spectacle. F.F.
Costa Rican Drama by Nathalie Avarez Mesen with Wendy Chinchilla Araya and Daniel Castaneda Rincon. Ana Julia Porras Espinoza (1h46).
Clara was born with a dent. Clara was born with body dystrophy, which her grandmother used to claim that she has healing powers. Clara, who is now asexual, will experience unexpected results from her awakening to love. This is a feminist, fantastic, and esoteric parable. It draws from Stephen King’s “Carrie” novel and fairy tales. The filmmaker captures her heroine’s mutation using a handheld camera. The scenario uses symbols and references that are too obvious to make it convincing. X.L.
Roger Michell (1h29) British documentary
Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. A sort of impressionist collage. It is irreverent, friendly, respectful, and ironic. While the monarchy is an outdated system and Britain is at risk of losing the title “great”, with Scotland and Wales jumping in to the litter, and Queen Elizabeth II is 96, Roger Michell manages to make its editing beautiful and witty. The sovereign is charismatic, as the filmmaker of “The Duke”, captured it just before he succumbed to a heart attack in September last year. God Save the Queen. F.F.
