“And the party continues!”, a pure Guédiguian

“And the party continues!” by Robert Guédiguian

Robert Guédiguian returns to his heart city, Marseille, where fiction intersects with tragic and political realities, and where he interweaves social themes, Armenia, communism, his favorite themes, but also family meals with his troupe actors that we like to meet every two years like old friends. We particularly follow the character of Rosa, 60 years old, nurse, mother and grandmother, who helps the most deprived and hesitates to take the head of a common left-wing municipal list. Everything shakes up when she finds love again with Henri, a former bookseller who is a bit of a dreamer.

Robert Guédiguian wanted to put a lot of things into this twenty-third feature film: Printemps Marseillais, rue d’Aubagne, the situation of hospitals and schools, and the art that brings us together and unites us. And the party continues! is therefore a pure Guédiguian, to be taken with its qualities and its faults. It’s sometimes a little naive, where some of his recent films had a darker tone, but the result is most often moving, Ariane Ascaride as Rosa floats over all this with majesty. And in a short, seemingly innocuous scene, a delivery man extends his shoulder to a customer so that he can sign his receipt, and that is perhaps Guédiguian’s cinema, a shoulder both rough and comforting, turned towards the others.

Vincent must die by Stéphan Castang

Vincent is Karim Leklou who, one day, is violently attacked by an intern at work. This unexplained act is the beginning of a descent into hell, which will force him to go into exile in the countryside, where he will meet Margaux, the incredible Vimala Pons. Between them, there will be desire, love but also this violence which arises without warning, a real epidemic which invades the entire country. Going through gender, Stéphan Castang examines all our contemporary failings: gratuitous violence, paranoia, phobia of others, withdrawal into oneself, fake newsin short, not a happy hell but, who knows, maybe love…

Vincent must die is incredibly mastered, by its performers and its director, a virtual unknown, first film at 50 for Stéphan Castang, who had a few short films to his credit, but above all a life in the theater and in Burgundy, far from Paris, as What, when it comes out of its confines, French cinema opens up to talents, it is well deserved, long live Vincent!