Official selection – in competition
A tough-skinned cliché wants cinema to be used only to tell stories. It may also be there not to tell them, but to turn around and leave it to the viewer to smell that something fishy is going on on the screen. In this gray area between fantasy and its underside, the latest extraordinary and extraordinary feature film from Catalan director Dande Albert Serra (The death of Louis XIVAnd the freedom), an elegant and impudent road driver, who was promoted for the first time in competition. It must be said that the film, full of one hundred and sixty-three minutes, has what it takes to create a stir through a mixture of unexpected ingredients: either star Benoît Magimel, immersed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in French Polynesia, in a murky soup of “political thrills” that can Just bear the name.
In the alliance of nature and artificial, character decay is played
In Tahiti, a man named De Roller (Magimel in a curvaceous state) in a cream suit, colorful T-shirts and blue curaçao sunglasses, clasps his hands, collects complaints, and exercises his quiet interpersonal skills on the right and left. He could be a mafia boss or a nightclub owner, but the job he holds is as formal as possible: that of the High Commissioner of the Republic, who represents the French state in society. Here and there, between private establishments and public salons, he does presence work, feels the pulse and plays, as he can, unsuspecting psychics.
Because, recently, rumors circulated about the imminent resumption of nuclear tests (everyone still remembers those that happened in 1995). He hears the discontent and the separatists organize powerful demonstrations. De Roller, worried, already notices that there are mysterious movements around the island: an unknown submarine moored in the territorial waters, a mysterious American with a gaunt face wandering around, an increasing presence of the French Navy. The HC goes looking for information, but nothing really makes sense.
Gauguin-like color palette
From the thriller, the thread calls out the paranoid side of the ’70s (because of the assassinationBy Alan J. Pakula or Chinatown, by Roman Polanski), where he points out some outward signs, such as this “helicopter” view of a pile of containers, indicating from the outset the motive behind the mysterious traffic. But the mechanics of this type of game don’t matter much to Sera, as she used to play with already formed characters (Dracula and Don Juan in my death story), paranoia is a mental and cinematic machine, a projection machine.
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