Towards a bright future, Indiana Jones, Passages… The films to see or avoid this week

Dramatic comedy by Nanni Moretti, 1h35

There is no age to be an old fart. Nanni Moretti started young, at a time when we weren't talking about "boomer". The actor and filmmaker has always looked at the world with an uncompromising and heartbroken nostalgia. But his melancholy has always given way to irony, and sometimes to a jubilation which gives his cinema a paradoxical and exhilarating vitality. Towards a radiant future is in this one of his most beautiful films, with sovereign intranquillity. Largely forgotten from the prize list at the last Cannes Film Festival, one could say that it is purely " morettien". This would mean that it is frozen, while on the contrary it shows the passage of time and the difficulty of accepting it. Moretti is staged in the guise of a renowned filmmaker, Giovanni. When he is not riding an electric scooter, he is filming a film set in 1956, when the Soviets invade Budapest. Its scenario imagines a Hungarian circus passing through Rome. Through this marquee populated by elephants and acrobats, Giovanni claims to tell the story of the bankruptcy of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), subservient to the USSR. Its main actors may highlight the love story of their characters, Giovanni swears by politics. He doesn't listen to his wife Paola (Margherita Buy), who is also his producer and who can't find the courage to leave him, any more than their daughter, who flirts with the unglamorous sixty-year-old Polish ambassador. Everything scampers off. Between precision of the frame and fluidity of the editing, his staging binds the strata of the story, softens the breaks in tone, with a lightness that is not self-evident. The end of love, politics and cinema converge here in a final parade that brings together its troupe. As if the only collective Moretti still believed in was a film crew. E.S.

Adventure of James Mangold, 2h34

Fifteen years after an unloved fourth installment, Harrison Ford puts on his leather jacket again for a final lap, under the watchful eye of James Mangold (LeMans66, Logan, Copland…). A dashing octogenarian, he immediately dispels our doubts about the captain's age. While the intro features a digitally rejuvenated "Indy," the plot is set well in 1969, as Indiana retired with personal troubles. His past resurfaces thanks to his goddaughter, embodied by the petulant Phoebe Waller-Bridge, a devious heroine who will galvanize our tired hero, while blowing a great wind of femininity and modernity on this fifth adventure. Reminiscences of Tintin accompany the intrigue, led drum beating. Object of the quest, Archimedes' Dial of Destiny is a perfect Hitchcockian "McGuffin", which leads Indiana Jones in search of lost time. It's almost Proustian. In addition, this last part offers viewers a very moving finale. The whip of emotion cracks. Indiana Jones “ for ever”…O.D

Drame d'Ira Sachs, 1h31

Tomas is a director. He is played by Franz Rogowski, a German actor seen with Michael Haneke and Christian Petzold. The young man is in a relationship with Martin, played by Ben Whishaw, an elegant and eclectic British actor. At the end of filming party for his new film, Tomas dances and sleeps with Agathe, a schoolteacher (Adèle Exarchopoulos, who needs no introduction). He tells Martin the next morning. He liked to make love with a woman. The affair turns into a story. Tomas leaves Martin to move in with Agathe. Martin consoles himself in the arms of another boy. Agathe becomes pregnant. Agathe's parents don't take kindly to their daughter's romance with a man who was in a relationship with another man. Tomas still has a crush on Martin. He hesitates, does not want or does not know how to choose. We don't know if Ira Sachs has read René Girard, but Passages illustrates quite well the triangular and mimetic desire theorized by the author of La Violence et le Sacré. He doesn't try to cut corners. He shows the cruelty of feelings, the rawness of bodies. He films on the bone, without breathing, in the privacy of apartments. Each scene redistributes the cards, keeps the spectator on the alert. Each character, male or female, fights with their weapons. Jealousy circulates between beings. If the plot is agreed, the story is never predictable. Passages is almost a thriller. E.S.

À lire aussiNotre critique de Passages: la passion selon Ira Sachs

Fatih Akin in Drama, 2h18

He was born in a cave full of bats. His mother names him Giwar ("born in suffering"). It must be said that being born in Iran under the beginnings of Khomeini is not the surest guarantee for a peaceful existence. The kid will actually see all the colors. It's a little hard to believe that all of this is based on real facts. But yes: the Kurdish composer and conductor father is arrested by the ayatollahs. It is exile in Paris, then in Bonn. The suburbs all look alike. The courageous mother does housework. The son, to make ends meet, resells porn VHS to his high school classmates, which earns him an exclusion. Since it is like that, he will engage in the traffic of hash, which has the merit of being even more lucrative. He becomes a terror. His fists act as his brain. The guy rolls mechanics, with his leather jackets and his mole on the cheek. Basically, it's a tender. He is in love with a neighbor. Alas, the young lady refuses his advances. Is it to seduce the recalcitrant? He steals a van full of gold, which earns him a stay in Syrian jails with torture as a result. In German prisons, getting into rap is the solution to repelling boredom. Giwar renamed himself Xatar (translate: "dangerous") and found success in singing. This edifying story which spans thirty years is led at a brisk pace by a Fatih Akin whose lightness is not the main quality. This gives a bodybuilder film, in the hands of a small-footed Scorsese. IN.

Horror film by Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1h28

The distributor Potemkine Films pulls out of its bag a crazy classic from the other side of the world. Almost 50 years after its release in Japan, House, the first feature film by Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi, is being released in France in a restored version. The horror film begins like a dreamlike fable. A high school student at odds with her father, Belle prides herself on a trip to the countryside. She embarks with six friends. The group intends to take advantage of the rural comforts offered by their aunt's house. They will find there a catalog of dread. The absurd rubs shoulders with the monstrous. Log fights spawn with gluttonous pianos; jazz fusion irruptions waltz with bursts of blood. It smacks of cruel tales, phantasmagoria. The filmmaker, above all, indulges in incessant scopic pleasures. Here an eye, there a lens – between the two, the camera, the cinema. We forgive him the music. S.C.

Film d'animation de Shin'ya Kawatsura, 1h45

Three Japanese women advance with a painful step through the countryside. They cross green landscapes under a blue sky. It's beautiful. It's slow, too. We are only at the opening of La Maison des égarées and the tone of the film is already set. Released two years ago in Japan, for the tenth anniversary of the 2011 tsunami, this feature film by Shin'ya Kawatsura recounts the return to life of two survivors of the disaster. The eldest, a tall tempestuous teenager, tries to escape an abusive father. The youngest, traumatized, hasn't said a word since she lost her family. The two are welcomed by a volunteer granny from the disaster area. They settle in a mayoiga, a traditional refuge for vagrants of life. A few fantastic appearances sprinkle a film that stacks shot-shot slices of life. Based on a novel by Sachiko Kashiwaba, the story happens by accident. The subject deserved better than this somewhat misguided film-therapy. In the same vein, review Suzume instead. S.C.