Gérardmer Festival: Sleep, a Grand Prix that prevents you from sleeping

Gérardmer saw all kinds of monsters parade for five days. Witches, vampires, werewolves and other creatures from all countries have populated the area around the lake. And in the end, it's an ordinary man who wins the Grand Prix. So, no need for makeup or hemoglobin to make the jury, chaired this year by the writer Bernard Werber, shiver. The hero of Sleep (in theaters February 21), the first film by South Korean Jason Yu, is a sleepwalker. Nothing very serious in itself. Except that his strange behavior at night upsets his wife more and more. Her concern concerns their newborn in particular. After the dog, does the baby have anything to worry about? Nightmares disturb the young wife's sleep.

Noticed at Critics' Week in Cannes last May, Sleep skillfully brings paranoia into a couple's bed. Marriage, portrayed here with a certain irony as a business obeying the laws of efficient management, is in trouble. Sleep also has flaws, like the acting, beyond expressionism. This is especially true for Jung Yu-mi, who plays the worried wife – the late Lee Sun-Kyun, the Parasite actor, is more restrained. She makes Jim Carrey look like a model of sobriety. We will say that it is cultural and that Sleep obeys the codes of Korean cinema. Maybe, but when the direction doesn't have the virtuosity of that of a Bong joon-ho or a Park Chan-wook, it's obvious and grates on the ears. More annoying in the case of Sleep, its last act and its resolution, grand puppet and uninspired, in contrast to a controlled first hour.

The Jury Prize rewards two tied films, Amelia's Children and Waiting for Night. Two interesting works. We have already said all the good things we thought of the first, an Oedipal and Lusitanian version of Jordan Peel's Get Out. We'll come back to it soon since this second film by American-Portuguese Gabriel Abrantes comes out next Wednesday. You will have to wait until summer to see En attendant la nuit in theaters. This first feature film by Céline Rouzet confirms the renewed interest in genre films in French cinema, long sclerotic by a dull naturalism. After Grave by Julia Ducournau and The Animal Kingdom by Thomas Cailley - at the top of the César nominations with 12 citations - and other more or less successful forays into the fantastic (Acid, Vincent Must Die, Vermin), Waiting for the Night shows the virtues of imagination and metaphor.

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It's the vampire version of À bout de course, Sidney Lumet's masterpiece. The family is on the run not because of the parents but because of the eldest son, Philémon (debutant Mathias Legout Hammond, false air of River Phoenix), a blood drinker from birth protected by loving parents and a funny little sister. We guess that they often move, as soon as their secret is about to be discovered. This time they settle in a suburban area near the forest and far from the city. The mother (Élodie Bouchez) dabs bags of blood at the infusion center where she works to feed her offspring. But Philémon is now 17 years old. He is less serious, falls in love with the neighbors' daughter (Céleste Brunnquell) and represses his impulses less and less. Vintage teen movie (1980s), more suggestive than horrific, Waiting for the Night seduces and proves that the myth of the vampire is immortal.

Critics and the public found themselves with a common bad taste when awarding their prize to When Evil Lurks, the fifth feature film by Argentinian Demian Rugna. The story of two brothers confronted with an epidemic of violence caused by a corpse possessed by a demonic spirit. Contaminated men, women and especially children begin to savagely kill those around them. Rugna is a little too sure of himself and his effects. We are going to be treated to a political parable, in a country governed by a president, Javier Milei, who massacres the public service with a chainsaw. When Evil Lurks is nothing more than nihilistic entertainment, weighed down by tunnels of heavy and explanatory dialogue. For those who want to judge for themselves, the Cinémathèque française in Paris is running the entire competition from January 31 to February 5.