Since the oppressive and highly successful Calvary in 2005, Fabrice du Welz continues to dig an original and very personal furrow. Seventeen years and six feature films later, he therefore signs Inexorable. The story of Marcel Bellmer, writer, played by Benoît Poelvoorde, uninspired since a best-selling novel, who settles in the house of his father-in-law, a famous publisher who died, with his companion played by Mélanie Doutey and their daughter . But this seemingly harmonious bourgeois picture will quickly deteriorate, through the intermediary of a solitary young woman with an unknown past who will invite herself and take up more and more space in the house.
In the role of Gloria, the young Alba Gaïa Bellugi is a real revelation, but all the actors are excellent, like Benoît Poelvoorde, who literally strips naked and still explores new facets in his acting, to the point of still impressing his compatriot and director, Fabrice Du Welz: “Benoît fascinates me, electrifies me, he’s a genius, and I weigh my words, there aren’t many. He’s the most extraordinary being I’ve ever met in my life. In his dark moments and his intense light, he’s absolutely incredible. We both have a very strong energy, and so on the set, there is something that cancels each other out, which magnetizes itself, and when I go to the end of a scene with Benoît, I always have the impression of having fought against myself. Benoît is like a big beast that you have to manage to tame.”
Beyond the actors Inexorable also hits the mark thanks to its atmosphere, particularly visual, with a padded image that one would think came out of the 70s, and an assumed homage by film buff Du Welz to the “giallo”, very colorful Italian fantasy, popularized in its time by Dario Argento.
We continue with a comedy, the release of which has been accelerated to fall a few days before the first round of the presidential election, The same time, new creation by the ex-Groland duo Gustave Kervern and Benoît Délépine. And so you will have understood it, a film with very political references. Either an unscrupulous right-wing mayor, “uninhibited far-center” more precisely, Jonathan Cohen, homophobic, redneck, meaty and misogynistic, who tries to convince an environmentalist opponent, Vincent Macaigne, idealistic Droopy with pipe and velvet pants, to vote in favor of a large amusement park.
And by a combination of circumstances that we will not reveal here, the two find themselves literally glued to each other after the action of a feminist commando. All the trends of the time therefore pass here through the caricatural and creaking grind of the directors, which Jonathan Cohen mentioned on Tuesday April 5 on France Inter. “It’s also a very courageous cinema, they have great confidence in what they do. Nothing is predetermined, they look at things, they look at people, they put down their camera and then we go (.. .) It’s wonderful to make films like them because they take the time to see, and to watch. And that’s very rare in our profession.”
And if the first half of The same time is very funny with irresistible punchlines by Jonathan Cohen precisely, and a burlesque and schoolboy humor in the manner of the Farelly Brothers, the film unfortunately runs out of steam afterwards, not knowing where to go, but it is still excellent entertainment.
Finally, two other tips in brief among the novelties of the week, first the new film by Japanese Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Tales of chance and other fantasies, three stories and three trajectories of women. Ryusuke Hamaguchi had been winner of the Oscar for best foreign language film for the magnificent drive my carand in a completely different genre, The Bad Guys, new animated film from Dreamworks studios directed by Frenchman Pierre Perifel.