Love Life, Fifi, The Flash… The films to see or avoid this week

Drama by Koji Fukada, 2h04

Jiro and Taeko lived together in their functional, cramped apartment, along with Keita, Taeko's son from a previous union. Everything was going well, even if Jiro's parents were not thrilled with this marriage to a divorced woman. Life flowed smoothly. The gifted kid was champion of Othello, a strategy game. Jiro hadn't told Taeko about the girl he left for her. He runs the local social service. She works for an NGO that distributes meals to the homeless. Quiet days in Japan. This tranquility does not last. During a birthday, the child who was playing with a plastic airplane knocks himself out and drowns in the bathtub that we had forgotten to empty. It only takes a few seconds. Life changes. Will the couple hold their own in the face of adversity? Love Life is silent tragedy. Guilt nests. The pain is there. It permeates every moment, without cries, without too many tears. Together, the loneliness is more bearable. Moments of grace arise, these building lights that all come on at the same time, a wedding in the pouring rain. Love Life is made up of these little touches, these delicate interludes, to music à la Michael Nyman. IN.

À lire aussiNotre critique de Love Life: tragédie rohmérienne

Dramatic comedy by Jeanne Aslan and Paul Saintillan, 1h48

Fifi - diminutive of Sophie - 15 years old, lives in an apartment populated by noisy children and adults. It shouts, it insults each other, it slaps. We fear the worst in the Lorraine miserable genre. It's the beginning of summer. The holidays, like the film, promise to be painful. Then very quickly Fifi thwarts this naturalistic program. The social case turns into a fictional character. All it takes is an old friend, Jade, whom she meets by chance at the bakery, to turn the story around. The girlfriend, daughter of a dentist, is about to go on vacation. Fifi steals the keys to her pretty house in the city center. She enters it to drink beers and take a bath. Her tranquility is interrupted by the unexpected return of Stéphane, Jade's older brother. Instead of chasing the squatter, he recruits her to help him stick stamps on envelopes, a small job at home. In the cocoon of Stéphane's house, the difference in age and class fades. Fifi is a first feature film written and directed by four hands, but its heroine owes a lot to Jeanne Aslan. She finds in Céleste Brunnquell an intense alter ego. With her, a teenager who has never seen the sea and who discovers love is anything but a banal character. E.S.

À lire aussiNotre critique de Fifi: l'amour en douce

Action d'Andy Muschietti, 2 h 24.

Ezra Miller resumes his role as Flash in a solo film, where the director tries to tell his origins and to hang up the threads of a DC universe where Superman, Batman, Supergirl or Wonder Woman appear. The film also approaches the multiverse by eyeing its competitor Marvel. What a mistake ! The result is indigestible. The visual effects are ugly. Flash runs so fast that he wanders through time. But the viewer quickly loses his footing in this confusing plot. Only Michael Keaton as an old Batman escaped from Tim Burton saves from boredom. O.D.

Animation of the Dean Fleischer camp, 1 h 30.

Marcel, a shell of a few centimeters, lives in a house deserted by its owners with his grandmother Connie. A filmmaker makes a documentary about him. Combining animation and live action, this rambling fiction is daubed with cuteness. Closer to kitten videos on the web than a real movie! O.D.

Drama by Claire Denis, 2 h 17

A young American journalist (Margaret Qualley) without a passport in Nicaragua, in the middle of an election, sleeps with a soldier and then with an Englishman with troubled activities. It looks like John Le Carré filmed by Just Jaeckin. It's Claire Denis. The Cannes jury chaired by Vincent Lindon awarded him the Grand Prix in 2022. É.S.

Comedy by Ilan Klipper, 1 h 32

In a relationship for fifteen years with two brats, Simon, a history teacher (damien Bonnard, a neurasthenic), and Marie, a radio journalist, love each other but no longer support each other. How do you defuse everyday crises? By drawing up a charter of good principles. On this charming idea, Camille Chamoux, co-screenwriter and actress, wanders between the sweet and sour romcom à la Fleabag and the analysis of the evolution of conjugality and parenthood. All without causing a lot of laughs. C.J.