THE OTHER LAURENS (Belgium/France 2023) *** Directed by Carl Schmitz
THE OTHER LAURENS implies that there are two of them.In fact, there are and they are twins.When one apparently is done away with, the other investigates the brother’s death with skeletons coming unhidden from the closet.The film plays like a neo-detective misery and it feels like the Raymond Chandler films.The only difference is that this film is from Belgium, with locations in the United States (the Grand Canyon) and that there is more family relationship drama in this neo-black thriller.
Gabriel Laurens (Olivier Rabourdin) is a shaggy dog private investigator seeking out an existence one seedy adultery case at a time.When his niece, Jade (Louise Leroy), shows up at his doorstep to notify him of his estranged twin brother François’ recent death, he decides to take a hiatus and drive her back to her father’s massive estate on the Franco-Spanish border.
The family drama slowly overrides the detective mystery, in both a good and bad way.One is that the mystery and action become secondary and secondly, director Schmitz eventually bungles with both, the result being a really slow and plodding second half stretching the film too long.The film does not know when it should end.
Upon their arrival, they’re met with a cold reception from Jade’s calculating stepmother, Shelby (Kate Moran), and her gang of crusty back-country bikers intent on tracking the young girl’s every move. Short on cash, Gabriel vows to stick around just long enough to get things smoothed over with his bank. The more he sees, however, the more he realizes things aren’t as cut and dry as they seem.
To unearth the true cause of his brother’s death, Gabriel dons the identity of "the other Laurens" and is slowly drawn into François’ shady underworld. Along the way, he’ll cross paths with a bizarro cast of characters, including a pair of bumbling cops, an American mercenary, and a ruthless family of drug traffickers.
At this point, director Schmitz slips into a bit of comedy especially when the American mercenary shows up.The film gets a bit weirder as the plot thickens a bit too much.The humour might be too droll for one’s liking.
THE OTHER LAURENS attempts, to director Schmitz’s credit to be a modern homage to the sun-drenched California noirs of the 1970s, injecting their laid-back, cynical vibe with a healthy dose of stylish European minimalism. This tactic works lifting the film out of the doldrums.
Among the awards, Awards:The film won the Grand Prix at the Brussels International Film Festival 2023 and the Best Actor Prize for Olivier Rabourdin) in the main role (yes, he is the best thing in the film) at the Brussels International Film Festival 2023.
THE OTHER LAR+UENS is filmed in French and some English with a little Italian and Spanish spoken for good measure.
The film had its premiere at the Directors Fortnight Section In Cannes last year and opens this week in theatres this week and on VOD on August 27th.
MEET THE BARBARIANS (Les Barbares)(France 2024) **** Directed by Julie Delpy
Actress Julie Delpy (star of films by Godard, Kieslowski and Linklater) directs her own film proving herself totally apt and a force to be reckoned with.She centres her sights on comedy with a message with a film that matters that she delivers in style with lots of hilarity, drama and a bit of satire.The story is set in Paimpont, a small town in France preparing to welcome a Ukrainian refugee family and is surprised when a Syrian family shows up instead.Every town has its patriots, loyalists and racists all of whom show their influence on the Syrian family, but that is not perfect as well.Delpy shows the good and bad of both sides with a touching romance between the young Syrian teen in the family and a local French boy to bridge the gap of racism.It might be too obvious but the ploy works.And the town actually exists.Paimpont sits nestled in Brittany, content with its centuries-old heritage, its crêpes (the Brittany people cook everything with lots of butter, which is also disincorporated in the script), and its flattering self-image. A marvellous surprise from Delpy.
LES COURAGEUX (The Courageous)(Switzerland 2024) ***
Directed by Jasmin Gordon
Shot in French and set in the idyllic town in the stunning Valais region of Switzerland — known for its proximity to the Matterhorn, Alpine resorts, and upper Rhône river valley vineyards — 40-year-old Jule (Ophélia Kolb) is a single mother dreaming of a stable existence for her young family. Her children — 10-year-old Claire, eight-year-old Loïc, and six-year-old Sami — have learned to take care of one another, and, while the whereabouts of their gregarious mother are sometimes a mystery, the siblings know that she always returns to their home with a smile and a fantastic explanation. Director Gordon’s feature is impressive, though not without faults. At its best, Gordon is able to grab and maintain her audience’s attention to worry and care about what happens to the family - more of the children than of the mother. Her film omits Juke’s past likelier arrest and details of the children’s father, who one assumes could be of more than one, from the looks of the children. Jule does what she wants, breaking all the rules and expecting society to look after her. Society does not work that way and it is hard to feel sympathetic for her. But the sympathy is all for the children who are at a loss in terms of respect and doing the right things.
ELSE (France/Belgium 2024) * Directed by Thibault Emin
Playing like an experimental rather than horror film,, but with impressive special horror effects, this time in the form of melting humans into a molten mess, ELSE is, unfortunately, lacking a solid story base makes the entire exercise seem long and ineffective. Introverted and uncomfortable in his own skin, Anx (Matthieu Sampeur) does not consider himself an obvious partner for Cass (Édith Proust), the feisty whirlwind of confidence he finds himself waking up alongside after a presumed one-night stand. And yet a romance begins to bloom. However, the nascent relationship is threatened when a strange disease spreads throughout the world, gradually causing the infected to merge with whatever they touch. Finding themselves quarantined to Anx’s claustrophobic apartment, the couple is soon besieged by their very surroundings, which have begun coalescing with their neighbours into a spongy new life form that seeks to add the lovers to its mass. At best, the film captures the Pandemic atmosphere of dread and the worst is that nothing happens after.
EMILIA PERES (France 2024) ***** Top 10
Directed by Jacques Audiard
There are many reasons to make EMILA PEREZ compulsive viewing.For the younger audience, Selena Gomez has a solid supporting role, while Zoe Saldana delivers also a riveting performance.But mostly, it is another film from French auteur Jacques Audiard (UN PROPHET, RUST AND BONE) and this is arguably the best trans movie there is currently out there or has been out there prior.Though essentially a French film, the film is shot in Spanish and set in Mexico City where drug kingpins rule. The film is about one successful, in fact very successful one, who trans and repents his ways.Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldaña) is a Mexico City defense attorney whose brilliant strategies have kept many murderous but wildly affluent clients out of jail. Her reputation draws the attention of Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofia Gascón), a notorious kingpin, who is secretly transitioning. He hires Rita to arrange an itinerary of under-the-table procedures with the world’s best surgeons, while making a plan for the wife (Selena Gomez) and kids he is leaving behind. The process is a success, Manitas’ murder is staged, and Emilia Pérez is born. This new identity affords Emilia the ability to create a whole new life for herself, but the past begins to creep back, threatening to undo everything she and Rita have worked so hard to achieve.It is a brave and progressive film with the script co-written by Audiard covering key issues like retribution, LGBT+ issues and the drug cartel problem in Mexico.The film bears several parallels with Audiard’s best film UN PROPHET.There are the main characters leading a new and better life. prison scenes and innocence lost.The story contains twists that arrive every 30 minutes or so, unexpected to any audience.Yet, the film feels believable.There is suspense, melodrama, and thrills with a bit of violence that was also present in UN PROPHET.Though the ending can hardly be called a happy one, it is a satisfactory, credible and effective one.The film is one of the best at TIFF 2024, which also premiered at Cannes this year.
ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND (France 2024) **** Directed by Raoul Peck
Director Raoul Peck’s (I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO) latest doc is a mind-blowing one that won the Best Doc Prize at Cannes this year.As the title implies, the doc would not have been made if not for the revelation in 2017, when 60,000 unknown negatives of Ernest Cole’s work were discovered in a Swedish bank vault.Through all his adversity, Cole never lost his power to take stunning pictures, trying to see those who spend their lives going unseen. “It’s a matter of survival,” he wrote, “to steal every moment.” Director Peck tells Cole’s story, like a biopic mainly through voiceover using mostly the photographs he took in South Africa and the United States.the plight of the black men and all the adversity is vividly portrayed and deeply and emotionally put across to audiences in what might be deemed a must-see well-crafted documentary.
JANE AUSTEN A GACHE MA VIE (Jane Austen Wrecked my Life) (France 2024) ** Directed by Laura Piani
As in Jane Austen novels, this is a romantic comedy from the female's point of view with a setting of the present trying to recall the past.It is only slightly funny, a film more for the female that celebrates female independence where men post a secondary role.As a clerk in the legendary British bookshop in Paris, Shakespeare & Co, Agathe (Camille Rutherford, OK, TIFF ʼ23) loves her job. But there are faint stirrings of discontentment when she realizes how long she has been surrounded by stories of others’ desires and adventures instead of chasing her own.The romance is forced and it does not take a genius to see who the heroine will end up with.
MISERICORDE (France 2024) **** Directed by Alain Giuraudie
MISERICORDE has the feel of a Claude Chabrol murder film in which the cat-and-mouse tale is mainly the mouse outwitting the cat with the aid of his cohorts.The film is a prized twisted macabre tale with bouts of unexpected humour from the director of the 2014 gay hit L’CONNU DU LAC (Stranger by the Lake), this one with the fabulous Catherine Frot as a widow. who takes in Jérémie as a lodger whose sensual presence is immediately and progressively destabilizing to all around him.Martine (Catherine Frot) happens to be the mother of his childhood friend, the brutish Vincent (fJean-Baptiste Durand). The duo’s interactions are terse and laden with resentment, but clearly erotically charged.When a fight goes awry, Misericordia swerves into noir territory with absurdist undertones, and an ensuing investigation spirals around a loner neighbour, ineffectual gendarmes, and a nosy country priest — seemingly the only inhabitants in this dewy, mountainous village perpetually bathed in twilight.No sex scenes but there are two with full penises on display, that are both erotic and hilarious.MISEROCORDE, extremely well plotted and executed is a total wicked delight!
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (Iran/France/Germany 2024) ***½
Directed by Mohammad Rasoulof
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG is yet another film about women’s rights in Iran, a country that still forces women to wear face coverings. A very strict husband and father, Iman (Misagh Zare) is an ambitious middle-class lawyer working for the Iranian government. He has just been promoted to state investigator — the stepping stone to becoming a revolutionary court judge — and, alongside an increase in income and social cachet, his family has received clear instructions on what is required of them as Iman’s star rises in the eyes of the state. His wife (Soheila Golestani) and adolescent daughters (the scene-stealing Setareh Maleki and Mahsa Rostami) must fall in line and never let anyone know of the father’s work lest the family get persecuted by activists. When the father finds his gun missing, all hell breaks loose in the family tearing it apart. The stakes get higher when social media learns of the father’s work and there is a post on the internet causing the family to leave the city. The social and family drama works well in a gripping dramatic account but when it turns to a cat-and-mouse thriller at the end, the transition does not really work. Still - the winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
A SISTERS’ TALE (Iran/Switzerland/France 2024) **
Directed by Leila Amini
There are many restrictions for women in Iran.It is up to the pioneers to break them.
These are the words spoken by Nareen at one point in the doc.Director Leila Amini creates a stunning portrait of her sister Nasreen in her new doc A SISTERS’ TALE.(the plural is used because the tale is told by two sisters and the singular article is used as it is one story.Nasreen pursues her difficult dream of becoming a singer in Iran, a country where women are banned from performing in public. Nasreen has starlike charisma and gives Leila access to all her highs and lows. She is always striving to fulfill her artistic ambitions while navigating the needs of her two children, her marital tensions, and patriarchal pushback at every turn. Nasreen frequently clashes with her husband over her music and his nighttime absences.A simple-looking doc that took 7 years in the making that shows the resilience of the human spirit amidst gender prejudice.Personally, I do not find the songs that spectacular but rather the courage and determination of the singer that shines.
SHEPHERDS (BERGERS)(France/Canada 2024) ****
Directed by Sophie Deraspe
Following a medical wake-up call, Montréal copywriter Mathyas Lefebure (Félix-Antoine Duval) abandons his life in Canada to reinvent himself as a sheep herder in the French Alps. After a rough start, he’s joined by Élise (Solène Rigot), a civil servant tempted by his stories of pastoral life, and together they commit to a summer on the mountainside. Just the two of them. And one border collie. And 800 sheep. Though what might sound like a boring premise for a movie, SHEPHERDS is arguably the most charming and beautiful while at times harsh and gripping, film to be seen at TIFF this year. Mathyas learns the harshness of a shepherd’s life, especially working for free for a very violent and angry boss, who would use his truck to run over the sheep that would not mount the ewes. After quitting in disgust, Mathyas finally uses his learned skills to tend sheep in the mountain for a much more kindly couple. The most moving scene involves Mathyas throwing a stone at Hola, the border collie for wanting to follow him to leave the farm. With a female director, the film also has a strong and positive female slant.
THE SUBSTANCE (USA/UK/France 2024) **** Directed by Coralie Fargeat
French director Coralie Fargeat wowed TIFF’s Midnight Madness crowd in 2017 with her breakthrough slasher revenge movie REVENGE, a movie that many will remember for her extremes in violence, blood and gore. She returns with much more of the same violence, blood and gore in higher-budget horror satire with stars Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid adding to the mayhem. Desperate to stay pretty as a fitness celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) purchases a black market substance that turns her into a younger and prettier double, calling herself Sue (portrayed by Qualley). They are one body but have to switch every 7 days, old to new and back - NO EXCEPTIONS. However, the younger Sue extends her 7 days with disastrous results that climax into a complete blood fest on New Year’s Eve. The wild build-up to the climatic NYE show is excellently paced in this stylish fable of the strife for eternal beauty. Super gory makeup and special effects have to be mentioned as well.
NICE GIRLS (France 2024) *** Directed by Noémie Saglio
The synopsis from Allocine:The intrepid Léo, self-proclaimed "best cop on the Riviera" " learns that her colleague and brother-in-law Ludo has been killed in Hamburg. While she wants to discover the truth, she is forced by her superior to let a German supercop do it. Out of the question to let a "loser in a suit" investigate, especially when she discovers that it is in fact the attractive and highly trained Mélanie. Forced to team up, these two women with characters as explosive as they are opposed do not suspect that Nice is facing an imminent threat and that they are more linked than they imagine.
It seems barely 5 years ago where there was a general complaint of females being a minority in movies.More female directors, more female-plotted stories and more finance to female-related film projects were all the rage.The opposite seems to be the case recently, with more than 50% of the movies made being either female-dominated or having a strong female slat.Whether in Hollywood or elsewhere, as in this example, in France, females rule.A recent example is the TIFF Midnight Madness movie directed by Coralie Target THE SUBSTANCE who came to rise with her breakout film REVENGE, also a female-oriented movie.
The new Netflix comes is appropriately called NICE GIRLS is directed by female Noémie Saglio who also co-wrote the film with two female protagonists.French female cop Leo (Alice Taglioni) is the protagonist who knows her way around Nice.The male cop Ludo is killed, female cop Leo’s best friend who is also called her brother in Hamburg.She befriends a German cop, Melanie (Stéfi Celma) the killing was in Germany, against orders to stay away in order to find out the cause of the death of her best friend and of course, seek revenge.Her supervisor, also a female is unaware of Kea’s motives, though Leo had been ordered to stay away and look after security in the Cote d”Azul (the Riviera) where a climate change summit is taking place.
The film, at it best pokes fun at being politically correct.The film centres on police protection of the climate summit though the finances of the summit are provided by dirty money.Words like things being sold on the black market cannot be mentioned because of the word ‘black’.There is a joke on the conventional belief that Germans are always so meticulous.But cliched too is the story that has to have the two cops, one French and the other German initially at loggerheads (What happened to girls working together? the question is asked) and later having to work together to solve the case.
The film aims to be light and funny, action-packed with little violence and with a bit of mystery the story with a few twists.The film achieves its aim without too much fanfare, ending up a forgettable little French light action flick suitable to watch on Netflix.
NICE GIRLS is available for streaming on Netflix this week - a Netflix original movie.
SIMPLE COMME SYLVAIN (Nature of Love) (Canada 2023) *** Directed by Monica Choki
Simple like Sylvain is what being with Sylvain is like, as Sophia Magalie Lépine Blondeau) discovers. Sylvain (Pierre-Yves Cardinal) is a simple carpenter hired by Sophie to fix up her country home. Sophia is a 40-something dissatisfied professor who teaches love relationships and hangs out with literary and art-loving folk who look down upon ordinary people. Opposites attract here — she’s the brains and he’s the brawn — and they quickly begin a tumultuous affair. But Sophia has a hard time reconciling the reality of their differences, especially when they introduce their family and friends to one another, and their disparate political leanings and varying viewpoints become comically apparent. As their affair continues, the tension between their different worlds comes to a very uncomfortable head. The first major argument comes fast and furious and Sophie is distraught. What follows too is fast and quick compared to the film’s slower pace in the first half. Director Choki creates a credible somewhat angry fable of relationships that does not conform to the standard romantic drama. The film opens on digital August 13th
CAPSULE REVIEWS of Select Films will be posted once embargoes have lifted. Embargo dates listed.
DES PREUVRES A’AMOUR (Love Letters)(France 2025) ***½ Directed by Alice...
