'La buena letra' (★★✩✩✩), the blackout before the blackout, and other premieres of the week
These are the new releases hitting theaters this April 30th:
Ratings★★★★★ masterpiece ★★★★✩ very good ★★★✩✩ good ★★✩✩✩ average ★✩✩✩✩ bad
The Good Letter (★★✩✩✩)Directed by: Celia RicoCast by: Enric Auquer, Ana Rujas, Sofia PuertaProduction: Spain, 2024. 110 m. Drama The blackout before the blackoutBy Salvador Llopart
Since the great blackout, everything has seemed curious, threatening, full of foreboding, if not more apocalyptic. Although nothing had happened yet when, on the morning of the disaster, I watched La buena letra, Celia Rico's new film, with the expectation typical of the work of a filmmaker endowed with magnificent sensitivity. Capable of illuminating the smallest corners of human relationships. Especially the relationships between mother and daughter, explored with broad vision and profound depth in her two previous films: Viaje al cuarto de una madre (Journey to a Mother's Room) (2018) and Los pequeños amores (Little Loves) (2024). Based on the novel of the same name by Rafael Chirbes, La buena letra was like a great promise, with those two brothers and their respective wives at the center of a postwar drama...
An image from the film
Caramel filmsDuring the screening, I usually jot down in a small notebook the impressions the film in question makes on me. Yes, now you know: that crazy person writing in the dark is me. They're usually rather illegible notes, with no real purpose other than to capture the moment. I go over them systematically before tackling a review, like right now. Sometimes they fill pages and pages. They're not usually of much use, really. But there they are, like an emotional memory. The screening of La buena letra ended, to give us some context, shortly before the general blackout. But for me, it was like a preview of what was to come. What's going on here? I asked myself. Not a note, not a noteworthy emotion. Not even a comment. The emptiness, you could say.
A very well-served emptiness, it must be added. Well photographed, better acted, flawless from every formal point of view. Well done, of course. Nothing to object to in that sense. But without much emotion. What's the dominant feeling? Those who have ever sat in front of the television at that drowsy hour, at the beginning of the afternoon, with a soap opera on, know what I'm talking about. Nothingness, closing your eyes, napping. The blackout began for me with the movie, a little before it did for the others. Perhaps that's why it didn't affect me as much when I went outside and the blackout really began. I had disconnected a while ago.
The Story of Souleymane (★★★★✩)Directed by: Boris LojkineCast by: Abou Sangaré, Alpha Oumar Sow, Nina MeurisseProduction: France, 2024 (93 min)Drama An uberized migrantBy Philipp Engel
Boris Lojkine's film takes us inside the mind, the routine, and the stresses of one of those dark-skinned "riders" who proliferate on every street in European capitals. In this case, it's a Guinean man pedaling like crazy to deliver food in Paris, although it's easy to imagine that we could have shared a bike lane with him. And yet, the Souleymane played by Abu Sangaré couldn't be more specific, more real, less abstract. He's less an idea than a person. Both Sangaré and Souleymane arrived in France illegally from their native Guinea to earn money and treat their ailing mother in Africa. The former arrived before he was eighteen, and the latter did, a significant difference since they involve very different procedures: Souleymane needs to apply for asylum, and to do so, he must present himself as a political refugee. The scene in which he breaks down, lying to the official, is brutal. He will end up having to tell the truth, his truth, Souleymane's truth and Sangaré's truth, which merge into one.
The protagonist of the film
Narrated as a breathless urban thriller against the clock, using a "Dardennian" shoulder-mounted camera tracking device, Souleymane's Story is a film in constant motion: overwhelming, vibrant, and exciting. It not only gives us the opportunity to look at the other, that other we don't want to see because it makes us uncomfortable, but also does so without falling into the misery-porn that has become so prevalent in certain cinema that claims to be political and social. There's no doubt that Boris Lojkine, who came from filming documentaries around the world and realized that adventure was just a stone's throw from his home, and Abou Sangaré, who only dreamed of being a mechanic, are people from completely different backgrounds and cultures. But what matters is that they've done something great together: something honest, fair, and organic, and that speaks of building bridges, that philosophy that goes against the grain.
Hidden Rites (★★✩✩✩)Directed by: William Brent BellCast by: Tuppence Middleton, Ralph InesonProduction: Great Britain, 2023 (104 minutes). Horror. 'Folk horror' on saleBy Jordi Batlle Caminal
Despite its solid production and a promising first half hour (the disappearance of a girl at the harvest festivals of a small town whose inhabitants all seem to be touched in the wing), the story progresses arrhythmically and the script is a disaster. The ogre is played by a disturbing Ralph Ineson, who was already in The Witch , one of the key titles of folk horror, a suggestive tributary of horror cinema in which Hidden Rites also delves, in small print.
Frame from the film
By P. Engel
The divine Ariane Labed has always been much more than Yorgos Lanthimos's wife. She's an actress with her own cult following, and now she's trying to prove it once again as the director of a furious debut film, in which she seems to have taken a classic coming-of-age female character, multiplied it by two—they're two stepsisters—and bombarded it with all sorts of eccentricities, questioning the role of a single artist mother, and seeking to make the audience uncomfortable in the Greek style. Although uneven, it captivates with its macabre tenderness.
Image from the movie
By S. Llopart
First, there's the story: wonders and blows. With damaged and vulnerable heroes, the Thunderbolts. More prone to comedy than epic. And a twilight villain (the "friend" Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Until the story within the story emerges: labyrinths, traumas, and disappointments transformed into scenarios for confrontation. The absurd isn't far away. Nor is existentialism. With a moving ode to friendship and the constant gratitude, we are not alone. And new possibilities for the Marvel universe. We continue...
The protagonists of the new superhero movie
By J. Batlle
A popular comedy that far surpasses its clichéd premise. It has spark, funny situations, witty lines, and both Albanese and Raffaele demonstrate remarkable charisma. It also integrates current issues such as rural depopulation and the foster care of children from Ukraine into the plot without bombast or edifying pretensions. Some things, however, are jarring, especially the regrettable and clearly unnecessary scene with the suicidal girl.
Actor Antonio Albanese
By P. Engel
A curious infomercial, produced by Richard Gere, about the last Dalai Lama, which breaks the fourth wall and looks directly at the viewer, as if in a one-on-one conversation. The problem is that this device alternates with less daring ones, such as a biography marked by the Chinese invasion and exile, which is somewhat diluted, or an introduction to meditation adorned with supposedly poetic images, which doesn't give us time to expel our negative thoughts. At least it is accurate in identifying bellicose masculinity and climate change as the main evils of our world.
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