Reality, The Beast in the Jungle or Strange Way of Life… The films to see or avoid this week

Biopic de Tina Satter, 1h22.

On June 3, 2017, Reality Winner, 25, returned home with her arms full of shopping bags. Two FBI agents are waiting in front of her house for the military employee, linguist and cryptologist within the company Pluribus International Corporation. Constable Garrick (with mustache) and Constable Taylor (without mustache) are courteous and considerate. They help the young woman fill her refrigerator. They care about his frightened pets (a dog and a cat). We do not know if we are dealing with amateurs or outstanding manipulators. They also inquire whether there are weapons. There are. They do not say the purpose of their visit. Other FBI agents join them and conduct a search while the interrogation continues in an empty room of the house. From this material where nothing is invented, but where everything is amazing, Tina Satter stages a summary of post-9/11 America. Sydney Sweeney plays everything in nuance Reality Winner, whistleblower with a paradoxical profile. A psychological thriller in the form of an oppressive camera. E.S.

Dramas by Victor Erice, 2h49.

Close your eyes is the fourth feature film by Victor Erice, an octogenarian adored for The Spirit of the Hive (1973). His return to the cinema could only delight his admirers, very happy to discover him at the last Cannes Film Festival in the Cannes Première section. We guess the ambition of the Spanish filmmaker. Film the passage of time, regrets, friendship, and salute cinema, the art of the ghost. This is the meaning of the quest of Miguel, a filmmaker in search of Julio, a famous actor who disappeared overnight twenty years earlier. The form itself questions. Closing your eyes is not so different from a soap whose scriptwriters would have loaded the boat with clichés (dead child, runaway loves, whisky…) and let the hours slip by. We do not make up for the time lost in 2h49. E.S.

Western by Pedro Almodóvar, 31 minutes.

Almodovar is so fashionable that his latest film is produced by Yves Saint-Laurent. Film, it must be said quickly. The director is content with the bare minimum: a half-hour western. As we are at Almodovar and he obviously has not recovered from having missed Brokeback Mountain at the time, this is a gay western. The genre suits him like moon-boots to a camel. Welcome to Bitter Creek. It is a city where Ethan Hawke is the sheriff, suffering from back pain which the sequel will prove to be imaginary. What is not the surprise of the brave Jake to see arriving in the main street this good old Silva, a handsome dark with whom he lived a torrid passion twenty-five years earlier. The reunion is punctuated by looks heavy with innuendo. Wine revives feelings that were dormant with only one eye. In the morning, they wake up in the same bed. The result looks like an unpublished sketch of the Unknowns. It is doubted, however, that Almodovar practices the second degree. Ethan Hawke, with his star on his chest, is strangely extinct. Pedro Pascal, frowning, plays like a model who would imitate a Jack Palance on bromide. His green denim jacket is fine. He is the real star. The scenario appears to the absent subscribers. Ang Lee can rest on his laurels. Such are the harsh laws of the West, caballero. As the spectators will not come for so little, the distributors added to the program The human voice, already released on DVD. Same duration. It is not known if there is an intermission. The few who remember remember this "remake" where the dark Tilda Swinton replaces the burning Anna Magnani in this text by Cocteau directed by Rossellini. IN.

Drama by Patric Chiha, 1h43.

This is the story of a missed date. In The Beast in the Jungle, a short story considered one of Henry James' most enigmatic and ambiguous, two Americans, John and May, fall in love with each other without ever taking action. The young man is convinced that a dangerous beast lurks somewhere - a terrible thing that could happen, without anyone knowing what it is. Despite his love for May, he is convinced: marriage would only precipitate his misfortune. Patric Chiha transposes the plot of this story into a nightclub, between 1979 and 2004. We feel in each shot the desire to translate the incredible strangeness of his characters, who meet each week without telling each other that they love. The two actors tirelessly play the same score. They are twenty-five, thirty, forty years old, the same people sitting in the same armchairs. Times change, they don't. The scenario does not advance either. If Henry James brilliantly described the wanderings of these doomed characters, those of Patric Chiha seem to be treading water.