Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, creators of carnage

The week’s cinema releases with Thierry Fiorile and Matteu Maestracci: “May December” by Todd Haynes and “Captives” by Arnaud des Pallières.

Todd Haynes, who loves to explore the gray areas of American culture, starts from a news item, in the 90s, a married woman and mother, has a relationship with a 13 year old schoolboy, she will go to prison, before resuming this affair, and having two children with the kid, who had grown up.

Nowadays, a famous actress, Natalie Portman, will meet this woman, Julianne Moore, and her family, to nurture her role. She is going to turn this story into a film. The relationship between the two women is not healthy: mimicry, jealousy, intrusion, the actress goes very far in this approach, and the man, the weak role of the trio, discovers through this external gaze, his own alienation. May December is disturbing, and remarkably played.

Captives by Arnaud des Pallières

A top-notch female cast: Mélanie Thierry, Marina Foïs, Josiane Balasko and Carole Bouquet among others, and the first mentioned plays the role of Fanni, who at the beginning of the film arrives at the Salpétrière hospital in Paris, in 1894. She claims to enter fully willingly, looking for his mother. Among numerous patients presenting various more or less acute pathologies, supervised by unfriendly supervisors, who sometimes subject them to abuse and humiliation.

In this rather terrifying closed door, a sorority will take shape, and art will bring in a little light, the film offers a reflection on the observation of madnessa portmanteau word used here to isolate and lock up women, to the point that one wonders if Fanni herself, presented as a victim, is not a mythomaniac.