Here are some films seen by journalist Marc-André Lussier as part of the 79e Venice Film Festival.
Posted yesterday at 8:00 a.m.
The origin of evil
One of Suzanne Clément’s best roles
Suzanne Clément, like you’ve never seen her before. You will not find the Quebec actress anywhere in the photos provided by the production of the film – we understand why after having seen it –, but the role she plays in The origin of evil is no less important. With his first two feature films, Impeccable and Exit time, Sébastien Marnier already displayed his taste for disturbing stories, drawn from the darkest aspects of the human soul. He continues in this vein, this time in an apparently more solar tone, which nevertheless hides dark aspects in the life of a bourgeois family.
Laure Calamy plays the role of a modest worker in a fishmonger’s, who reconnects with her biological father (Jacques Weber), at the head of a family as rich as it is strange. Suzanne Clément embodies the lover of the protagonist, who is serving a six-year prison sentence, to whom permissions are however granted. This woman can be impulsive, seized with bursts of anger, and sometimes only has violence to express herself. A fight scene with another cellmate in the shower is even reminiscent of the famous one fromEastern Promises (David Cronenberg) with Viggo Mortensen…
We can’t reveal anything about the story, but this Franco-Quebec co-production, punctuated by the effective musical score of Philippe Brault and Pierre Lapointe, is extremely effective. And Suzanne Clément reveals the extent of her palette with a truly astonishing performance.
Presented in the Orizzonti Extra section, the equivalent of Un certain regard at the Cannes Film Festival, The origin of evil will be distributed in Quebec by Maison 4:3, but no release date has yet been set.
Bardo (or False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths)
Mexico as a state of mind
PHOTO PROVIDED BY NETFLIX
A scene from Bardo (or False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths)by Alejandro González Iñárritu
When Alejandro González Iñárritu walked into the room where the press conferences are taking place, he received the loudest applause to date. Bardo (or False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths) is the Mexican-American filmmaker’s first feature since the Revenantwhich earned him a second Oscar for best director, a year after birdman. Even before the first question, the director of babel wanted to point out that the 1er September, day when is launched bardo at the Mostra, also marked the 21e anniversary of his arrival in Los Angeles, a city where he thought he would stay only a year. “When we leave a country, we keep a nostalgia that lives in us every day, he said. For me, Mexico is not just a country, it’s a state of mind. »
This is exactly what the filmmaker translates in his new feature film of nearly three hours. Cinema and dreams intertwine with reality to vividly recount the state of mind in which an eminent journalist, also a documentary filmmaker, finds himself when he returns to his country of origin to receive a great distinction. In this world, Amazon is preparing to buy – what could be simpler – all of Baja California to make it an American territory.
Without being autobiographical, this allegory on Mexican identity and culture is visibly inspired by the filmmaker’s existential questioning. This film, the first he has shot at home since Amores Perrosis punctuated with bits of stagecraft bravura and Iñárritu sure knows how to create strong images.
Produced by Netflix, Bardo (or False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths)in the running for the Golden Lion, will be released in theaters in November before being posted on the online broadcaster’s platform on December 16.