Daaaaaali!, The Beast, Race for Glory... Films to see or avoid this week

Comedy by Quentin Dupieux, 1h18

That way, we don't bother. Quentin Dupieux has a generous vowel: he puts six “a”s in Dali. For good measure, he hired five actors to play the Catalan painter, using a device that Todd Haynes had adopted with Bob Dylan in I'm Not There. It goes without saying that the result is much more fun and infinitely less laborious. Imagination reigns on the shores of the Mediterranean. A young journalist (Anaïs Demoustier) tries to interview the master. We hear him before we see him, with his instantly recognizable voice, this caricatured accent, these rises in the high notes. Finally here he is, going endlessly up a hotel corridor. Larger than life, even more delirious than in the famous chocolate advertisements, Édouard Baer has a blast and we must admit that he crushes his competitors a little (Jonathan Cohen holds his own, Gilles Lellouche and Pio Marmaï remaining behind). Dali is great. He is unbearable, leaves the set in the middle of a sentence, hangs up on poor Anaïs Demoustier who has a lot of ideas. The camera is not big enough. The microphone is not in the right place. There is always something wrong. Dupieux slips into the madness of his model, stringing together exquisite corpses with a good humor that would have enchanted the surrealists. During a dinner, a priest who came out of Buñuel's house recounts his dreams and suddenly stops, explaining: "That's when I woke up." A cowboy shoots the priest who is riding a donkey. On his terrace, Dali practices pigeon shooting. The gardener absolutely wants to invite him. He is served an infamous broth. Gala is there, the terrible Gala, vestal with intonations from beyond the grave. Daily front pages punctuate a plot that has neither head nor tail. The producer (Romain Duris, feverish and cunning) faces all these insults with the stomach of an ostrich. The director is faithful to the fantasy of his hero. He also inherited part of his hoax. That's what we like about Dupieux, this alacrity that only belongs to him, his crazy, joking side, this unique way of landing on his feet. The gags collide. A certain seriousness is not absent, Dali often believing he sees the old man he will become in a wheelchair. This technicolor ego offers the most delightful spectacle. The film turns into a turbulent playground. Boredom takes flight. Seriousness gets kicked in the butt. It doesn't drag. The sequences are as dizzying as a lottery wheel. This Dali in all his states blows away the dust of museums, invents his own character, shakes up his legend. Between two bursts of laughter, we will perceive this very rare thing, the love of cinema. IN.

Also read Our review of Quentin Dupieux's new film: le Daaaaaalí! the initiated

Drama by Bertrand Bonello, 2h26

Why wouldn’t we have three lives? Just one is not enough. Feelings feel cramped there. Different temporalities are needed to evoke this failed love story which we know could have succeeded. In 2044, Léa Seydoux, who seems to have little to do with her ten fingers, lends herself to a unique experience. In this dehumanized future, emotions are no longer useful. To clean your DNA, nothing could be simpler. You are immersed in a black, viscous liquid. A robot pricks you in the ear and all your memories disappear. Like an oiled seagull, the heroine plays the game. We find Léa Seydoux in 1910. Corseted in her evening dress, she haunts society salons. This Gabrielle Monnier is a launched pianist. Paris has its feet in the water. Floods cause a fire in a porcelain doll factory. Surrounded by the flames, the musician dives into the basement of the building. Change of scenery in 2014. Léa Seydoux is the caretaker of an architect's house in Los Angeles. The alarm goes off at four in the morning. She's not really afraid. A stranger observes him from his car. Every time there is a man. It's always the same. They brush against each other, miss each other, hesitate, hope. Each time, there is a nightclub, the only place where love is allowed. Otherwise, he's hiding in the jungle. Bertrand Bonello was inspired by Henry James. The writer does him a lot of good. This vast panorama is chock-full of discoveries. Film within a film, temporal faults, sequences of quiet beauty whatever the era, the filmmaker has digested his influences. We smell that of David Lynch, which could be frightening. Bonello opts for romance and freedom, is not afraid to switch to news items, and jumps from science fiction to melodrama. The common thread here is Léa Seydoux. She carries the entire company on her shoulders. In comparison, his partner seems bland. She embodies the tomorrows that sing, the todays that cry, the yesterdays that disappoint, all this in a sound of fire and water, music by Adamo or Visage. The film works like a jukebox that has mixed the songs. This happens by sliding. The eras merge with infinite sweetness. Under molded ceilings, in the middle of deserted suburbs, in interchangeable and disturbing nightclubs, the characters miss their destiny. Léa Seydoux, sovereign, would cross the centuries, confront armies, raise mountains. The film is original and beautiful, clever without being complacent. IN.

Also readOur review of The Beast: whatever the era, Léa Seydoux the untamed

Animation by Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry, 1h24

By Morpurgo! Its name already sounds like a call to the imagination and literary journeys. In a story, we would see him as a zany musician playing from village to village or as an enlightened prince, master of a distant kingdom returning from war. Except that Michael Morpurgo is not a character. This octogenarian with such British courtesy does not belong to any fiction, he writes them. Ambassador of children's literature in the United Kingdom, he is the author of more than 150 books and has sold nearly 35 million worldwide. An animated film magnificently adapted from his eponymous novel published by Gallimard, The Kingdom of Kensuké immerses us in his world as eventful as it is moving. It tells the story of the team of Michael, a teenager who left with his family to sail around the world. But during a storm, he goes overboard with his dog Stella and ends up on an island. He quickly discovers that he is not alone. Kensuké, a former Japanese soldier, has lived there as a hermit since the Second World War, after the ship on which he served sank. At first hostile, the solitary old man welcomes the young boy into his kingdom, in a house built among the trees. He will teach him to live in harmony with nature and its inhabitants, including a tribe of orangutans that he protects from ferocious poachers from the seas. An ecological fable full of poetry and an adventure film with multiple twists and turns, The Kingdom of Kensuké is a wonderful ode to human bonds and the beauty of the planet. With very little dialogue, served by sumptuous music and images, it takes us through all the emotions, from wonder to tears. V.B.

Also read: 22 years later, the captivating Kingdom of Kensuké by Michael Morpurgo is finally adapted for the cinema

Drama de Agnieszka Holland, 2h32

Green Border has little to do with Me, Captain, the clandestine journey of two young Senegalese who left Dakar to reach Europe. Both films won awards at the Venice Film Festival – special jury prize for the first, silver lion for best director for the second – but they take different perspectives on the “migrant drama”. Unlike the Italian Matteo Garrone, the Polish Agnieszka Holland (The Shadow of Stalin) does not take gloves. Not just because she films in black and white. Green Border is a work of fiction that invents nothing. It begins in October 2021, at the peak of the crisis, when thousands of migrants from Africa and the Middle East flocked to the Polish-Belarusian border. Alexander Lukashenko, irremovable dictator of Belarus since 1994, in his "hybrid war" against Poland, welcomes these refugees in Minsk to better send them to enter his neighbor, that is to say in the European Union and the Schengen area. The Polish PiS government unceremoniously rejects these pawns. This context is recalled and explained in small touches, through a dialogue. But Agnieszka Holland is above all in the action. Facts and gestures. It's brutal. We enter the story through a Syrian family. She fled the war to go to Sweden. The Istanbul-Minsk flight is an idyllic break. We welcome them on the tarmac with flowers and smiles. What followed was less encouraging. They are taken to the border with Poland. They are abandoned in the hostile and swampy forests of Podlaskie, a rural region in the east of the country. On each side of the barbed wire, border guards or soldiers monitor the area. Dogs and baton blows drive back these wretched people of the earth, taken hostage by political issues that go beyond them. Jan, a young Polish border guard, does not shy away from the task. Refugees squat at night in the house he is renovating before the arrival of his first child. His wife has moods, he doesn't. Another Polish character gives yet another perspective to the situation: Julia. The fifty-year-old psychologist becomes an activist within a group of volunteers. Agnieszka Holland films a humanitarian disaster three hours from Warsaw with cold rage. But with Julia, the story becomes more demonstrative. The epilogue drives the point home. In February 2022, at the time of the Russian invasion, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were welcomed with open arms by the Poles. Two weights, two measures. E.S.

Also readOur review of Green Border: hell on Earth

Comedy by Stefano Mordini, 1h47

What is the difference between German wine and vinegar? The label ! » The Lancia team can boast with this schoolboy joke they tell themselves during rallies. It is only an attempt at good war for the Italians to keep face and hide another reality in the face of German supremacy. Because if the Germans are certainly not the best when it comes to wines, at the beginning of the 1980s, they beat their competitors soundly on the roads during automobile competitions in Sweden or Portugal thanks to the performance of their Audi Quattro with its four-wheel drive. But the Italians have not said their last word. Race for Glory tells the story of this memorable and very real battle between the two teams, Lancia against Audi, to win the title in the 1983 World Rally Championship. The interests go beyond sporting competition: it is above all a question of test new technologies and sell vehicles. But you don't buy a car from a loser. For Lancia, whose Rally 037 only has two-wheel drive, the confrontation looks doomed in advance, like David versus Goliath. This is without counting on the cunning and determination of Cesare Fiorio, the central figure of the film who inspired the screenplay. The sporting director of the Lancia team is ready to do anything to dethrone Audit. Whirring, the comedy starts joyfully with the little arrangements of this dirty kid who is a bit of a trickster who adapts to the rules with a few deviations. Like this very funny scene where he walks around two inspectors who have come to approve the number of prototypes required to participate. Except that ninety-seven are missing... But after a while, the film drags on and goes a bit in circles, for lack of any real dramatic stakes. It's also better to know something about this mechanical sport to fully understand all the challenges of the races that follow one another. On the other hand, we are attached to the actor Riccardo Scamarcio. The man who will play Modigliani in Johnny Depp's next film performs a faultless lap, astonishing in the role of the boss of the Lancia team. V.B.

Also readOur review of Race for Glory: without speeding