IN QUESTA PAGINA:
- Athena
- Un Couple
ATHENA
Id., Francia, 2022. Regia Romain Gavras. Interpreti Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon, Ouassini Embarek, Alexis Manenti. Durata 1h e 37’.
More than two centuries after the Revolution of 1789, the values of freedom, equality and brotherhood are still not applied and enjoyed by every French citizen. The battlefield where these contradictions are discussed is the banlieues, urban suburbs populated by heterogeneous humanity often confined to the very margins of society. French cinema has told the rage and social, ethnic and cultural conflicts of the banlieues many times. Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine is the most well-known film among many about the same topic. Not much has changed since 1995 and that movie inspired by the tragic assassination of a boy by the police. This happens in the contemporary tragedy Athena, in competition at Venezia 79. It’s the killing of the younger brother of the three protagonists by the hand of the police to unleash the riot that is the core of this story. A popular insurrection «filmed like war, no holds and cinematic resources barred» as Venice Film Festival says about the movie. Just like the co-screenwriter of Athena Ladj Ly did not spare anything to the audience in his first feature behind the camera Les Misérables, another burning wall-painting of the French suburbs that premiered in Cannes 2019 and won the European Film Award for best screenplay. Behind the camera this time is Romain Gavras, son of the great director. Romain described the banlieues in the video clip he directed, such as Stress (2008) that was very controversial because of its violence. Romain’s first feature was Our Day Will Come (2010, inspired by the video clip Born Free that he shot for M.I.A.), another story of marginalization and violence played and produced by Vincent Cassel that worked even in the following Le monde est à toi, (2018), a grotesque crime comedy focused on a band of small time drug dealers and their attempt for a big shot.
Emanuele Bucci
UN COUPLE
Francia, Stati Uniti. Regista Frederick Wiseman – Interpreti Nathalie Boutefeu Durata 64′. Produzione Wat Films / Zipporah Films.
Frederick Wiseman makes his first fiction film at 92. The subject is the epistolary relationship between Leo Tolstoj and his wife Sophia. “Un couple” is the product of the isolation of the great director due to the pandemic. Wiseman couldn’t work on a new documentary. But after more than 60 movies, Wiseman commented with his well-known irony on the news of being competition with this movie. «I can’t see why I have to be considered just a director of documentaries ». Documentaries such as Near Death (1989), La Comédie Française ou L’amour joué (1996), La danse-Le ballet de l’Opéra de Paris (2009), At Berkeley (2013), National Gallery (2014), many of those presented in Venice. Wiseman was in competition for the Golden Lion in 2017 with Ex Libris: The New York Public Library. He won four Emmy awards and an honorary Academy Award in 2017. The news of his first feature fiction was surprising for an artist who, during his career, explored the most different realities, such as the psychiatric ward of Titicut Follies or the small Indiana town of Jackson Heights. Talking about his first fiction movie, based on a series of monologues based on journals and letters by Sophia Tolstoj, the wife of the Russian novelist, said: «I’ve always done what I felt had to be done. It seemed the right time to do it, then I did t. I’ve no obligation to be coherent».
Tiziana Leone
