Suddenly alone, Building 5, Fremont... Films to see or avoid this week

Drama by Thomas Bidegain, 1h50

In Antarctica, the islands often have the drawback of being deserted. That has its charm. However, the disadvantages are numerous. It's not about being shipwrecked there. Ben and Laura learn this the hard way. A storm causes their boat to disappear. They had gone to visit this big rock stuck in the middle of the sea and the weather got wild. Their sailing trip around the world is compromised. Here they are on dry land with their poor motorized inflatable boat, suddenly forced to take shelter in the ruins of an old whaling station. The couple has an interest in staying together. They are cold. They are hungry. They are afraid. No radio. They would have to last ten days, maximum. Without news from them, the husband's brother will worry and notify emergency services. The man plays reassuring. The woman is more nervous. The sand is gray, the sky heavy. They watch for it in the hope of discovering the helicopter that will save them. Ben undoubtedly remembers his childhood readings, manages to light a fire by rubbing two sticks, like in the Junior Beavers Manual. They feed on shellfish. Their meals unwillingly copy the menus of a Michelin-starred Scandinavian restaurant. A semblance of domestic life takes hold. Obviously, they argue. It occupies. Deep resentments rise to the surface. That's not all that. What if we drew a gigantic SOS on the ground with boards, just to signal their presence to an improbable plane? Suddenly Alone, inspired by a novel by Isabelle Autissier, has something quite physical about it. No offense to Sandrine Rousseau, nature has the gift of transforming itself into an enemy. Bad weather comes one after the other. Winter is coming. What's on the other side of the mountain? Time stretches. Madness risks gaining ground. Gilles Lellouche and Mélanie Thierry delve into their characters with an intensity and fervor that command admiration. Obviously, they had a hard time. It's for the good of the film. After a while, the roles reverse. This survival is very cinematic. IN.

Also readOur review of Suddenly Alone: ​​The Impossibility of an Island

Three-episode drama by Satyajit Ray

In 1955, Satyajit Ray made his first film, The Lament of the Path, far from the canons of Bollywood, with music by Ravi Shankar. The first part of a trilogy (The Unconquered and The World of Apu will follow), chronicle of Apu, a poor child from Bengal who became an adult in Calcutta. Bedside films by Wes Anderson - the Texan filmmaker shared his love for Ray at the last Lumière Festival, these works regain their splendor in a restored version. To be rediscovered in theaters or in a video box set at Carlotta. E.S.

Drama of Babak Jalali,1h3

Inspired jury prize, Fremont offered, last September, at the Deauville Festival a precious poetic and absurd interlude. Close to San Francisco, this locality has the largest Afghan population in the United States. This is where Donya settled. A former translator for the American army, the young woman fled Kabul, reconquered by the Taliban in 2021. By day, she works in a Chinese cookie factory, these famous “fortune cookies”: two superimposed wafers which contain a message of 'encouragement. At night, she tosses and turns in her bed, unable to fall asleep. When her boss asks her to write the cake maxims, Donya takes the bull of loneliness by the horns and slips her telephone number onto one of the papers. Who knows whose hands it will land in? A chain reaction of encounters begins: a taciturn mechanic, a psychologist who is a fan of White Fang... An elegant and melancholy black and white setting accentuates the existential uncertainty in which this heroine, uprooted in this new adopted country, is immersed. If Donya is a woman, it is because Babak Jalali wanted to give an image of Afghan women other than that of victims. Out of the question of making a social drama. Babak Jalali brilliantly recreates the cosmopolitan nature of Fremont, where Latino, Indian and Asian communities coexist. C.J.

Also readOur review of Fremont: all kabul in a “fortune cookie”

Drama by Alice Rohrwarcher, 2.13pm

Alice Rohrwacher, 41, is the darling of the Cannes Film Festival. In 2011, his first film, Corpo Celeste, was selected for the Directors' Fortnight. The Italian filmmaker returned with her following feature films and she was rewarded each time: Les Merveilles (grand prize in 2014) and Happy as Lazzaro (screenplay prize in 2018). These days she is invited to the Center Pompidou, which is devoting a retrospective to her with the evocative title: “Dreaming Between Worlds”. We don't really know what that means. Just like his cinema, a mix of mythology and modernity in a hippie chic style. His new film, La Chimère, in competition at Cannes but left without a prize, is in the same vein. It blurs time and space based on a network of Etruscan antiquities traffickers in Tuscany in the 1980s. However, it is less painful than the previous ones. This is partly due to the charm of Josh O'Connor (Prince Charles in seasons 3 and 4 of The Crown), moving as a British archaeologist in love with love. E.S.

Lodge Drama Ly, 1h4

The aerial shots reveal an island of slender bars, before diving onto one of them, a monumental building placed on a concrete screed in a city reminiscent of the others. This is building 5, the eponymous nerve center of Ladj Ly's new film. A drone and a gray suburb: from the opening, the director takes us back to his first film, Les Misérables, jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and 4 Césars including best film. The setting has not changed, nor has the theme fueled by social tensions, but after the police blunders, he denounces the housing crisis and the expropriation which forces residents to sell their homes at a ridiculous price to move further away. . Haby, resident of building 5, like her best friend, Blaz, is one of them. A committed activist, she discovered by chance at the town hall where she was on an internship a new plan for redevelopment of the neighborhood to their disadvantage. To combat this project defended by the interim mayor, she is running for the next municipal elections. This new film by Ladj Ly was expected, but the hoped-for shock wave unfortunately did not materialize. Where Les Misérables was disruptive with a quasi-documentary production provoking a feeling of raw urgency, Building 5 convinces less with its cruder narrative tricks. The character of the mayor, a pediatrician thrust into the position after the death of his predecessor, is the saddest illustration of this. Impulsive, he makes immediate and radical decisions, and remains obtuse in the face of the dismay of the inhabitants. This caricature of the politician lacks the nuances to be credible and denounce the effective disconnection of certain elected officials from their voters as the director seems to want to do. There remain some magnificent scenes, striking and controlled, including that of a move orchestrated in chaos, with an entire life thrown through the windows in a few hours. Witness on alert, Ladj Ly raises essential issues of burning news which can only concern us. But building 5 is not a number, there are human beings. Better drawn, these portraits would have made this political and social charge of a suburb in full change resonate with even more force. Damage. V.B.