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Cinema, streaming, VOD, TV… Find the editorial team’s advice every Friday.
The movie in theaters: I’m still here
We haven’t heard from Walter Salles for 13 years and his adaptation of Kerouac’s On the Road. And the director of Central do Brasil doesn’t miss his big comeback on the big screen. Inspired by true events, he returns here to the dark years of Brazil, those of the military dictatorship that reigned over the country from 1964 to 1985, through the kidnapping of a left-wing MP by armed men and the vain struggle of his wife and children to try to learn the truth about his disappearance in the face of the Kafkaesque horror of the system then in place.
A great film coupled with an equally fascinating family portrait, avoiding all the pitfalls of the thesis film in the style of the late Dossiers de l’écran and rewarded – rightly – at the Venice Film Festival for its screenplay and at the Golden Globes by the award for best actress for Fernanda Torres.
The series: Severance season 2
Three years of waiting between two seasons is way too long, but we obviously won’t hold it against Severance: the best Apple TV+ series is back with a new batch of ten episodes that raises
the bar even higher. Let’s recall the concept. In this semi-dystopian world, it is possible to have a
chip implanted in your brain that prevents you from accessing the memory of your time spent at
work, and vice versa.
We were a little afraid that the crazy twist of season 1 would be the Everest of the series, but this season 2 avoids all the traps set in its path by expanding the mythology while constantly keeping the humanity of its characters in sight. Jump on it, it’s caviar.
The streaming film: Decision to Leave
Park Chan-Wook deservedly won his Best Director award at Cannes in 2022 for this crime drama in which two people struggle to communicate. He is Korean and an investigator, she is Chinese and the main suspect in his ongoing case. When he spies on her, he projects himself alongside her, but when she is truly face to face with him, they cannot fully understand each other, and therefore love each other, always kept at a distance despite themselves.
Tang Wei, the actress in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, is as fascinating as the filmmaker’s editing and transition ideas, all perfectly executed. Like the time of this famous “impossible mirror” scene, where the two protagonists are finally reunited on the same plane, but artificially.
The film on TV: We, the Leroys on Canal +
Just a year ago, Florent Bernard (La Flamme, le Floodcast ) charmed Première at the Alpe d’Huez comedy festival thanks to this first film dealing with family life with a lot of heart and originality, led by a cast in great shape.
Between two (good) jokes, Charlotte Gainsbourg is particularly touching as a mother of teenagers who realizes that she is no longer in love with her husband, whom she nevertheless agrees to follow on one last road trip before deciding to leave him – or not? – for good. José Garcia is also perfect as a “too much” father , darker and more melancholic than usual.
The classic: A woman’s affair (France 5)
On this day of the fiftieth anniversary of the Veil law authorizing abortion, France 5 has the brilliant idea of programming this film by Claude Chabrol, adapted from the book written by the lawyer Francis Szpiner, released in 1988 and which earned a prize at the Venice Film Festival and nominations for the Césars and Golden Globes for its lead actress, Isabelle Huppert. She masterfully embodies Marie-Louise Giraud, an “angel maker” whose abortions that she performed in a forced illegality earned her the guillotine in 1943. A powerful testimony on the daily life of Vichy France and one of the best films, all in striking sobriety, of its director’s career.
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