Cinema “The critical spirit”: luxury, eroticism and motherhood

Was the Palme d’Or at the last Cannes Film Festival awarded to a film as long and flashy as The Yacht which embarks its characters, or is it the reflection of a political cinema read by the economist Thomas Piketty ? Is a post-colonial ’69’ gay sex scene in a blazing forest landscape subversive or does it renew old clichés? And what does a melodrama produced to fill a personal and cinematic lack produce? These are some of the questions we will be asking ourselves in today’s “Critical Mind”…

This second season of the weekly cultural podcast indeed begins by taking us on a stretched and convincing film, Without filter, from the Swedish Ruben Östlund, Palme d’Or at the last Cannes Film Festival, to a condensed and twirling film, Will-o’-the-wispby the only Portuguese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues.

After the luxury ship of Without filter and the fire station of Will-o’-the-wispwe will stop in the Paris of Rebecca Zlotowski, who is directing a feature film, Other people’s children, around the blended couple, played on screen by Roschdy Zem and Virginie Efira. The actress embodies a mother-in-law who contrasts with the usual representations of this family character.

Without filter

Without filter, Palme d’Or at the last Cannes Film Festival and Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s latest film, will only be on view from Wednesday September 28 but is already shaping up to be the new triumph of a director who is part of the entire small circle of filmmakers who have won two Palmes d’Or. Ruben Östlund had indeed already received the supreme award in 2017 for The place.

Film legitimately titled or rather securitized to the way certain financial products shone while containing rotten assets? Without filter is it an unamusing cruise or a satire to be savored without counting in which the scatological would be political?

The film, centered on a couple of models, takes place in three parts, first in fashion shoots, then on a luxury ship, then on an island where some of the passengers are stranded after the sinking of the ship at their destination. grenade sent by pirates.

• Listen to the first part of the show devoted to the Palme d’Or at the last Cannes Film Festival, Without filterby Ruben Ostlund:

Will-o’-the-wisp

Will-o’-the-wisp is the title of the new film, or rather of the “musical fantasy” of the always surprising Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues, author in particular of O fantasy, die like a man and The ornithologist. A clever title for a dancing film, where the flames are both those that ravage the country’s forests and those that ignite the bodies and hearts of two firefighters: one white and the other black, one a student in art history and the other in social sciences. ; one of the Portuguese colonization, the other prince, descendant of the highest aristocracy.

The film begins with the Portuguese royal family, who have still not digested the advent of the Republic in 1910, before settling inside a fire station after the young prince announced to his parents his decision to become a simple firefighter to fight the fires that strike. trees, arousing in him a carnal desire.

The prince, barely out of adolescence, then discovers, and simultaneously, in contact with his handsome instructor, the gestures that save and the gestures that win, how to fight against real flames and welcome metaphorical fire.

The film tells a story of more than half a century in just over an hour and keeps accelerating to deliver scenes and images that may seem kitsch but which blur the lines by mixing tones and genres: firefighters posing in famous paintings in a sort of reimagining of the firefighter calendar and post-lockdown irony; sex scene of a post-colonial gay “69” in the middle of charred trunks; musical ballet in a barracks; projection session of roosters as so many representations of Portuguese forest spaces or even funeral vigil in particular queer…

• Listen to the second part of the show dedicated to the film by João Pedro Rodrigues, Will-o’-the-wisp :

Other people’s children

“The bond that can unite us to the children of another, a beloved man whose life and therefore family we share, seemed to me not only nameless (we are talking about motherhood, paternity, not step-motherhood, beautiful -paternity). ), but also an orphan of representation. […] I wanted to do with Other people’s children, a film that I simply missed. »

This is how the director Rebecca Zlotowski, who had accustomed us to films plunging into singular universes, from the motorcycle circuit of Beautiful thorn to nuclear workers supervised in Large centraldescribes his fifth feature film.

She signs a film there on a more common and shared experience: a recomposed couple and what the presence of a child produces in him, bonds which are woven but could be undone. The film revolves around family moments: school outings, weekends in the Camargue, football evenings…

The new presence of Leïla, this 4-year-old little girl, in the life of her mother-in-law, played by Virginie Efira, underlines an absence, that of a child of her own, when she is over 40 and attends the birth of his own sister.

The film centers on the character of the stepmother but is totally different from the figure of the stepmother in fairy tales. And, in the note of intent of the film, Rebecca Zlotowski wonders in these terms: “Why has this woman, who lives a common experience – the one that I myself lived – never been a cinema heroine? »

• Listen to the last part of the show dedicated to Rebecca Zlotowski’s film, Other people’s children :

To discuss today:

• Occitane Lacuriemember of the editorial board of the film magazine OverflowsPhD student in aesthetics and visual studies;
• Alice Leroyfilm researcher and lecturer at the University of Paris-Diderot, who signed Cinema Notebooks ;
• Joffrey Spenocritic, programmer and filmmaker.

“The Critical Spirit” is directed by Samuel Hirsch and recorded at Gong Studios.