The franceinfo film of the week is The Chief, by Philip Barantini, an English director who spends time in the kitchen, an environment he knows well for having been a chef himself in another life. It is the darkest part of this profession that he portrays, in the story of a nightmarish evening, his character, Andy, Stephen Graham and his formidable cockney accent, is a starred chef on the edge of the abyss: his sentimental life is a shipwreck, he is in debt up to his neck and his brigade goes down the drain.
“At the restaurant the service is done in one take, life is only one take!”
Philip Barantiniat franceinfo
In the dining room, there is a dreaded critic who arrives without warning, irascible customers, The Chief tells the dark side of a profession of passion, but also made of violence at work and racism.
Andy runs on alcohol and cocaine, his fall is all the more oppressive for the viewer as we follow him live in an incredible sequence shot, a real one, without digital connection. The technical and artistic feat is not a gimmick, it’s a choreography, successful on the third take when Philip Barantrini no longer had time to shoot anyway, confinement obliges.
By joining forces with Disney, Guillermo del Toro obviously takes the risk of having to submit to a certain formatting. But the stature of the Mexican director is such today that he preserves his talent while obtaining the means to make a great film worthy of Hollywood’s golden age.
“Nightmare Alley is the flip side of the American dream.”
Guillermo del Toroat franceinfo
Nightmare Alley is as much an aesthetic jewel as a powerful romantic narrative, a film noir set in 1940s America. a dominating Yorker, Cate Blanchett at the top, as high as Lauren Bacall, Guillermo del Toro re-enchants a genre that we thought was stored on the shelves of cinematheques.
The couple who have been chronicling the misfortunes of their native country, Lebanon, and the memory of their happy days for more than 20 years, open a magic box: the one who arrives in Montreal at Maïa, an exiled Lebanese, living alone with her daughter, who knows almost nothing of his mother’s life.
Out of a cardboard box come incredible diaries, audio cassettes, polaroids, which Maïa as a teenager sent from Beirut under the bombs in the 80s to her friend who had gone to live in Paris. These Proust madeleines, overflowing with joy, fear and nostalgia, are remarkably animated in flashbacks. Too bad the film is weighed down by the current part of the mother-daughter story, remains a fantasized vision of Beirut before the tragedy of August 2020, on the port of the Lebanese capital.