Making of, Un silence, Scrapper... Films to see or avoid this week

Comedy by Cédric Kahn, 1h54

The financiers would like a happy ending. The producer lies like he breathes. The main actor has quirks. In short, the filming of The Irreducibles is off to a bad start. The director pulls out the little hair he has left. This committed filmmaker has, however, seen others. Simon would really like to be able to tell the story of these workers ready to do anything to save their factory. He almost swears that this will be his last film. His hopes now rest in the making-of for which a certain Joseph is responsible. In front of the camera, the protagonists go on strike. Behind, the technicians were quick to imitate them. Money is running out. The promised million euros has evaporated. Suddenly there is talk of unpaid overtime, of participation. Big ruckus. Simon is on the verge of throwing down the gauntlet. In Making of, Denis Podalydès relishes himself in the skin of this intellectual in a hat at the end of his tether. Mise en abyme, film within a film, Laughing Cow effect, call it what you want: the result is twisting, striking the corner of common sense, not devoid of depth. What happens to Cedric Kahn? A few months ago, his Goldman Trial was a success. He returns with this social comedy which, in a different genre, hits the dark side of the target. He casts a critical and benevolent eye on these celluloid artisans, pointing out the contradictions of the system as a good politician. Podalydès is impeccable, as usual. Jonathan Cohen deserves slaps, so much so that he adopts the faults of the histrionic star. This actor is still perfect for the moment. Xavier Beauvois, a big, elusive teddy bear, wins the prize as a chafouin, crafty, indelicate mogul. He lies like he breathes. It looks like it. Normally, The Irreducibles should be rewarded at Cannes. Or the Caesars. Cut! IN.

Also readOur review of Making of: Cédric Kahn points out the shortcomings of cinema

Drama by Joachim Lafosse, 1h39

There are silences more shattering than many noises. This Silence is like a stifled, slow-burning explosion that has been gnawing away at Astrid (Emmanuelle Devos), mother and wife of a renowned lawyer in a small provincial town (Daniel Auteuil), for thirty years. She is discovered collapsed in her car, as she goes to the police station where their son was arrested. What happened ? In this gripping film, between a psychological thriller and an intimate drama about the weight of secrets, this is what Joachim Lafosse will reveal to us through a flashback which takes us back to a few days before the events. Even before the tragedy explodes, tensions are palpable in the large bourgeois house where the family cohabits more than lives, almost cut off. The eldest daughter, now an adult, is long gone and refuses to return. There remains the father, François - at the center of media attention as he organizes a white march in tribute to two missing young girls whose parents he represents - Astrid, silent watchman of the household, and Raphaël, their son still in high school. Nothing is explained but the anguish is dull. In a tight staging of great sobriety, the narration stretches, opaque and heavy, to better mark the spirits later when the truth comes out with its repercussions, in the second part of the film. The Belgian director strikes with this oppressive closed session, inspired by the Hissel affair, named after the lawyer for the parents of victims of Marc Dutroux who was in turn convicted of possessing child pornography images. Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Devos have a lot to do with it. The actor returns to one of his most beautiful roles, that of a chilling and silent manipulator to whom he brings a dark depth and a mysterious charisma, in line with his films with Claude Sautet. In the role of the one who kept silent, Emmanuelle Devos, in permanent inner conflict, is overwhelming. Joachim Lafosse does not judge her. Torn between shame, guilt, a permanent blindness to keeping up appearances and wanting to believe that everything is behind them, she struggles, caught in her own trap and marked by the weight of years of silence. At a time of post-MeToo freedom of speech, Joachim Lafosse delivers a powerful Silence that will cause a stir. V.B.

Also readOur review of A Silence: Heavy Family Secrets

Comedy by Charlotte Regan, 1h24

Masters of English social cinema, Ken Loach and Stephen Frears can be reassured. The next generation is here. And feminine. Discovered at the Dinard British Film Festival, Scrapper is the ideal fable to start the year gently. Georgie, 12, has lived alone in her public housing project since her mother died of cancer. She invents an uncle to fool social services and earns a little money by stealing bikes. This routine implodes when her biological father comes back into her life. At 30 years old, Jason is not a quarter of the maturity of his daughter, whom he abandoned at birth. But he wants to fix his mistakes. To mollify the skeptical Georgie (the precocious Lola Campbell), who suspects the worst, Jason (Harris Dickinson, the insipid influencer of Unfiltered) offers to become his accomplice. He accompanies him in his thefts, except that none of them are really good! Director Charlotte Regan, whose first feature film this is, takes the opposite view of the clichés of the genre. No low, oppressive skies, no pouring rain or alcohol problems, Scrapper's world is bright and pastel, like the chick yellow and sage green houses of the neighborhood where Georgie grew up. Scrapper's realism does not exclude a hell of a fantasy. Like these talking spiders or these azure blue walls where clouds run, giving the impression that Georgie is rising towards the heavens. Without forgetting the overflowing imagination of this troublemaker, who imagines his father in the guise of a vampire and a gangster. Alongside Charlotte Wells, who was already interested in a father-daughter duo in Aftersun, and her friend Molly Manning Walker, winner at Cannes for How to Have Sex and director of photography for Scrapper, Charlotte Regan confirms that the new generation of female directors from across the Channel is full of ideas and displays a unique sensitivity. C.J.

Comedy by Rachel Lambert, 1h31

Viewers who left Daisy Ridley burying her mentors' lightsabers in the sand at the end of the last Star Wars trilogy will take time to recognize the British actress in The Dream Life of Miss Fran. Here she portrays an introverted office worker who keeps to herself. There is no question of mingling with colleagues chatting around the coffee machine or meeting them for game evenings. The Excel spreadsheet expert prefers to enjoy her sudokus and cottage cheese alone. Prone to getting lost in her imagination, Fran constructs a thousand and one baroque scenarios at the end of which she would die. Not that she wants to end her life. Her dreams of forests and oceans, of swarming reptiles and insects, are more of an escape from a daily life that overwhelms her. However, this abundant interior life finds itself shaken up by the new recruit of the open space: Robert cannot help but want to take Fran out of her protective cocoon. With this austere, dreamlike portrait of the weight of loneliness, director Rachel Lambert embraces the melancholy of existence, but does not condemn it. Its subject is less depression than the difficulty of forming connections and opening up to others in our modern and noisy society. The minimalism of this independent film, calibrated for the Sundance and Deauville festivals, is counterbalanced by a good dose of humor and a permanent difference. Fran, for whom the Grim Reaper is almost a friend, discovers unsuspected skills as a guest at “murder parties”. His morbid visions draw as much from the beauty of Pre-Raphaeliteism as from the grotesque scenes of Brueghel the Elder. A form of calm emerges, like a film stingy with dialogue which takes care of its silences and lets time pass drop by drop. Despite its floating heroine, the film is not depressing. On the contrary. Inviting introspection, he plays a little singular chamber music that resonates in our post-confinement world. C.J.

Also readOur review of The Dream Life of Miss Fran: Daisy Ridley and her poetic solitude

Biopic de Martin Provost, 2h02

Hard, hard to be a muse. He runs after her, trying to unravel her mystery. And only finds the light, the paint. Finally, what he was looking for. Portrait of a couple? More of a quest. Where it is rather she who has the beautiful role. Cécile de France is taller and less blurry than Marthe. Above all, she is also tormented and sunny. Vincent Macaigne plays in the background, respecting the taciturn character of Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947). At the turn of the century, the artist met the beauty. It's still bohemian in Paris. The “Japanese nabi”, as his friends nicknamed him, knew how to be mischievous, to play the avant-garde game, to be worldly. He met this lorette who calls herself an orphan, makes artificial flowers but agrees to pose naturally. And free. A godsend when you are not from an academic background but one of those anarchists from La Revue blanche. From the outset he represents her naked on the crumpled sheets of love: there she is, an Indolent (read under this title the source book by the psychoanalyst Françoise Cloarec, also author of The Dreamed Life of Séraphine de Senlis). In return, she pretends to be beautiful, hides her game, invents a name for herself. Will never say anything about her penniless family that she helps in secret. This earns this biopic some unnecessary melodious scenes. Other than that, life is good. Both in Montmartre and in the salons of these independents where the eccentric Misia sparks (Anouk Grinberg), freer than any woman of her time. Hippie atmosphere, then, in Normandy, in front of the chalet La Roulotte, near Vétheuil. We bathe and frolic naked in the woods. Then, little by little, voluntary seclusion in Le Cannet, in a doll's house. In spring, an almond tree always gives this white constellation that the painter adored until his last breath. We enter. The rays of day cut through the living room, playing in the mirrored bedrooms on the single floor. And, in the narrow bathroom, their prisms double the colors of the tiles, setting the bathtub in which Marthe, bipolar, carried out her cures. That said, did the deceived Marthe really hold her man back through her illness? The film leans towards this hypothesis. But it also shows a hedonistic household to the point of living for a while as a threesome. Jealousy and misanthropy only came gradually. Bonnard, beneath his distant exterior, was a runner. In 1925, his life was turned upside down when one of his other companions and models cut her veins (in a bathtub, already!). He had announced his decision to marry Marthe... The tragedy would explain the couple's withdrawal. He still received, however. Certainly less than in Normandy, when Monet (André Marcon) and the others arrived by boat, the Impressionist picnic all prepared. All this is amply described. Provost's Bonnard is just a sun-drunk colorist. Certainly, he had sincere admiration for Monet and Renoir; certainly, he never opened himself to abstraction. But he was more than their last offspring. Because he focused on rendering, through sophisticated angles and reflections, and through ever richer tones, the false familiarity of everyday things. In the monograph recently published by Hazan (280 p., 110 euros), Stéphane Guégan recalls that “Bonnard liked to dissolve the limits, between the interior and exterior of space, reality and fable, rigor and 'accidental, the ancient and the present'. Can this at all translate to animated images? Even though we know the delicacy of Provost, already author of the excellent Séraphine, with Yolande Moreau, a film which won seven Cesarees. E.B.R.

À lire aussiNotre critique de Bonnard, Pierre et Marthe: du bon, du beau, du Bonnard

Musical comedy by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr, 1h52

In 2004, the teen comedy Lolita Despite Me established Lindsay Lohan's pop idol status. The actress, who had not yet entered the spiral of addictions, played a good student propelled into a new high school, who found herself hanging out with the clique of pests and bimbos. Even if it means completely changing your personality. With this remake, we take the same scenario except for the twist. But by singing. Because this version is inspired by the Broadway musical. The singer Renée Rapp, who plays the feared gang leader, and Angourie Rice, the naive heroine who falls under the charm of the handsome guy and becomes obsessed with popularity, do not have a hint of unpleasant voice. But their vocalizations cannot mask a scenario copied from A to Z. Without the slightest update or reflection on generation Z. Difficult at the time of Euphoria, 13 Reasons Why or Sex Education not to find this vision of caricatured and dated American high school. C.J.