Benedetta
Festival-goers will have to go to the cinema L’amour – the Mecca of “erotic” cinema in Montreal – to see, on October 31 (two days before the official opening of the festival), Paul Verhoeven’s new offering. Five years later She, the Dutch filmmaker tells the true story of a nun at the beginning of the 17th centurye century in Florence, who was accused of having committed the sin of the flesh with another woman. Launched at the Cannes Film Festival, Benedetta, whose headliner is Virginie Efira, offers an ambitious cocktail of sex, blood and death.
The event
Audrey Diwan was advantageously noticed two years ago thanks to but you are crazy, his first feature film. This time, she takes us back to France in 1963, following the path of a very young woman who decides to abort in order to finish her studies and thus escape the social fate of her proletarian family. This adaptation of the eponymous novel by Annie Ernaux won the filmmaker the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Jane by Charlotte
For her very first achievement, Charlotte Gainsbourg chose a title in the form of a wink – and a tribute – to Jane B. by Agnès V., the film that Agnès Varda dedicated to Jane Birkin in 1988. Jane by Charlotte is not so much the portrait of an artist as a conversation between a girl and her mother, both actresses, at the same time similar and yet so different. The two women thus walk intimate paths with frankness and modesty. This delicate balance makes the exercise particularly moving.
We
In this feature-length documentary, winner of the Encounters section prize at the Berlinale this year, Alice Diop draws a portrait of “living together” in a deeply divided society. The filmmaker also revisits the city of her childhood, but, above all, she puts her talent as a documentary filmmaker at the service of meetings with women and men living near the RER B, a suburban train that crosses the Paris region from north to South.
Lost illusions
The French critical reception is generally very favorable for this new film by Xavier Giannoli (Daisy, The appearance), launched at the Venice Film Festival. Chosen to close the indoor shutter of Cinemania on November 14, this adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s literary monument stars Benjamin Voisin (Summer 85) in the role of the young poet Lucien de Rubempré, around whom revolves a prestigious cast, which includes Gérard Depardieu, Xavier Dolan, Cécile de France and Vincent Lacoste.
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