France (2021)
Country: FR/GER/IT/BEL
Technical: col 133m
Director: Bruno Dumont
Cast: Léa Seydoux, Blanche Gardin, Benjamin Biolay, Emanuele Arioli
Synopsis:
A tv journalist and anchorwoman suffers an emotional crisis and withdraws from the field, but returns when her celebrity refuses to relax its grip on her life.
Review:
Dumont again dumbfounds expectations with this curiosity. Initially playing the Network card as a satire on the media and the cult of celebrity, it then executes a left turn by eliciting sympathy for our vacuous narcissist of a heroine, who actually has a set of personal ethics after all, even if her reports do plumb the depths of banality. Seydoux is on screen all the time, often in tears, and delivers a terrific performance; the music is great, the cinematography is great. But it is like one of those workshops in which actors are given a general idea of their characters and where they are going and get to make it up as they go along, under the tutelage of a director who does not know when to say 'cut'. Much of it is ravishingly beautiful, some of it moving, and Gardin is hilarious as her Parisian-accented philistine producer; even Macron gets a look-in thanks to some digital trickery. One suspects it will be one to return to in a few years' time.
Country: FR/GER/IT/BEL
Technical: col 133m
Director: Bruno Dumont
Cast: Léa Seydoux, Blanche Gardin, Benjamin Biolay, Emanuele Arioli
Synopsis:
A tv journalist and anchorwoman suffers an emotional crisis and withdraws from the field, but returns when her celebrity refuses to relax its grip on her life.
Review:
Dumont again dumbfounds expectations with this curiosity. Initially playing the Network card as a satire on the media and the cult of celebrity, it then executes a left turn by eliciting sympathy for our vacuous narcissist of a heroine, who actually has a set of personal ethics after all, even if her reports do plumb the depths of banality. Seydoux is on screen all the time, often in tears, and delivers a terrific performance; the music is great, the cinematography is great. But it is like one of those workshops in which actors are given a general idea of their characters and where they are going and get to make it up as they go along, under the tutelage of a director who does not know when to say 'cut'. Much of it is ravishingly beautiful, some of it moving, and Gardin is hilarious as her Parisian-accented philistine producer; even Macron gets a look-in thanks to some digital trickery. One suspects it will be one to return to in a few years' time.
Country: FR/GER/IT/BEL
Technical: col 133m
Director: Bruno Dumont
Cast: Léa Seydoux, Blanche Gardin, Benjamin Biolay, Emanuele Arioli
Synopsis:
A tv journalist and anchorwoman suffers an emotional crisis and withdraws from the field, but returns when her celebrity refuses to relax its grip on her life.
Review:
Dumont again dumbfounds expectations with this curiosity. Initially playing the Network card as a satire on the media and the cult of celebrity, it then executes a left turn by eliciting sympathy for our vacuous narcissist of a heroine, who actually has a set of personal ethics after all, even if her reports do plumb the depths of banality. Seydoux is on screen all the time, often in tears, and delivers a terrific performance; the music is great, the cinematography is great. But it is like one of those workshops in which actors are given a general idea of their characters and where they are going and get to make it up as they go along, under the tutelage of a director who does not know when to say 'cut'. Much of it is ravishingly beautiful, some of it moving, and Gardin is hilarious as her Parisian-accented philistine producer; even Macron gets a look-in thanks to some digital trickery. One suspects it will be one to return to in a few years' time.