The week’s cinema releases with Thierry Fiorile and Matteu Maestracci: “In the Skin of Blanche Houellebecq” by Guillaume Nicloux and “There’s Still Tomorrow” by Paola Cortellesi.
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Reading time: 7 min
In the shoes of Blanche Houellebecq is the third part of Guillaume Nicloux’s improbable Houellebecquian trilogy. After The kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq And Thalassothe director, who constantly moves from one form to another, finds the famous writer while still seeking to, in his words, “build a relationship” between what Michel Houellebecq really is, and the character he plays.
Between fiction and incursions into reality, professional and non-professional actors, the film flies to the West Indies for a Michel Houellebecq lookalike competition, chaired by Blanche Gardin, in the presence of the writer. Sensitive to the colonial question, Guillaume Nicloux very seriously discusses the subject in Guadeloupe, between two absurd and hilarious scenes.
What is undeniable about him, whatever one thinks of Houellebecq, is his stainless optimism about human nature and the possibility of encounters. Not won at the start, when we remember, it was just before the filming, in 2022, of the nauseating and racist remarks exchanged between Michel Houellebecq and Michel Onfray, in the latter’s magazine.
Obviously, it is not this film which will provide a definitive opinion on Michel Houellebecq, but we want to think that Guillaume Nicloux’s Houellebecq comes close to reality. There is a form of utopia here, of a universe where we can still talk to each other without killing ourselves, where humor is a weapon of survival, and what is shown from the West Indies is worth the detour: the limousine driver, it’s his job in real life, who only speaks in Creole to Michel Houellebecq and Blanche Gardin, says what he thinks of France, he is anything but an extra.
There is still tomorrow by Paola Cortellesi
This feature film is directed by Paola Cortellesi, who also plays the main role, that of Delia, a stay-at-home mother in the popular neighborhood of Testaccio, in Rome, in 1946, a symbolic date since it corresponds to the right to vote given to women Italians, after the Second World War. Delia endures degrading comments every day from her three children, her sick and bedridden father-in-law, and her husband, who, to make matters worse, hits her almost every day.
And this is one of the qualities of the film: tackling the issue of domestic violence, an issue that is still alive in Italy today, with a large number of feminicides each year (one every 72 hours), as in France. Which also explains the success of the film locally, with no less than five million admissions.
There is still tomorrow is not perfect, there is sometimes a mixture between drama and comedy, or the addition of modern music, which does not always work. But the film is strong, for what it evokes. The actors are good, there are also very simple and magnificent scenes, like these secret moments of freedom of Delia with her friend, and we feel a homage to Italian neorealist films, but also to these slightly outrageous comedies of the 50s -60.