The trial for the November 13 attacks is ongoing, but the tragedy of 2015 can be evoked on Croisette by two fictions. Two films with radically different themes that list two types of cinema at opposite ends of each other. “November” by Cedric James (“BAC Nord”) is a thriller that’s both hyperrealistic and anxious-provoking. It all begins just minutes after the tragedy. Five days of investigation are launched to find two terrorists and refugees from the capital. Alice Winocour (“Augustine”, “Proxima”) selects intimate drama to free herself from historical reality and film the shattered destiny of a woman (Virginie Efira), who survived a Parisian massacre. The heroine will confront her trauma, weighing heavy with guilt. Another survivor accuses the heroine of locking herself in the bathroom and preventing other people from taking refuge there.
The films differ not only in their approach but also by the way they film the tragedy. Is it full frame or out of frame? While there are no absolute right or wrong options, it is obvious that this issue raises important ethical questions in cinema. Jimenez and Olivier Demangel, his screenwriter, opt for an elliptical approach. This is slightly broken by a hospital scene in which the police question the victims as they lie on their beds of pain. This sequence is where the frame edge gains all of its modest strength.
Alice Winocour isn’t afraid to go frontal. The foreground shows bodies collapsing before a camera that is placed on the ground. There are also close-ups of the dead executed and open wounds. This is just one of many obsessive images that the filmmaker uses to accompany the heroine on her Way of the Cross. The film’s two main points of investigation are: discovering the memory that is reconstructed in violent snatches, and, more importantly, determining if his cowardice is real… these issues, which take the form suspense, blur the film’s ambition.
Jimenez, contrary to this view, films a nervous thriller that pays tribute to the police force, their dedication, exhaustion, and most importantly to their “intuition”, which, despite impressive logistics, made it possible to capture the suspects currently on trial. His film “BAC Nord” was a sterile polemic. He will be criticized for not paying attention to the dead and corpses. However, it is possible to like the approach of “November” over that of “Revoir Paris. Drama certainly fair and powerful but does not hesitate in using sensationalism to find emotion.
David Cronenberg’s Anticipation Drama, featuring Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux as well as Kristen Stewart and Kristen Stewart (in theaters May 25, 2015).
David Cronenberg, aged 79, uploaded a video to YouTube a few months back. He was seen in a bathrobe embracing his bedridden body and then lying down next him to kiss him. In less than a minute, we saw that the director of Faux-semblances has not lost any of his transgressive intelligence, even when faced with the possibility of his death. This is what haunts his feature film “Crimes of the Future”, which he made in 2014, and was based on a 20-year-old script. As everything becomes decrepit and rusty, the future he envisions seems closer.
The post-industrial twilight environment. There is no mechanical object, or virtual technology. However, there are medical beds with organic memories and connection, and autopsy sarcophagi that were diverted from their use. His discipline? His assistant, Caprice (Lea Seydoux), was his disciple and helped him develop new organs and tumors. They were then displayed in public during surgical performances. They are surrounded by a maelstrom of clandestine deals and government censorship. There is also exchanges between bureaucrats. It is a sad, chaotic world where pain has been replaced by surgery, the marginalized eat plastic, and illegal “inner beauty contests” are held.
Cronenberg, medical experimentation’s Francis Bacon, is not at ease. It revives the body terror fiber of its origins but in a colder, more theoretical manner than “Crash” or “eXistenZ”. He remarks that “subtext has become text” and is more attached to his transhumanist ideas than to hiding them in horrifying suspense. He has a sense of humor, and a lot of it. Picasso? Duchamp?” “Duchamp?”, asks a cop. He has an intact taste for turning taboos – here an infanticide, there an abdominal scar cunnilingus. His questions are answered (where is art? Where does exhibitionism start? The feeling of environmental, migratory, and political disasters in this film about the end of life that fantasizes about new ones. Cronenberg’s beer by himself, who will not stop looking for his successor. N.S.
