In the films of Belgian auteur Joachim Lafosse, families tend to be torn apart from the inside, brought down by deep-seated psychological baggage (The Restless, Private Property), extremely bad behavior (Private Lessons, Keep Going) or a history of abuse (Our Children). For his latest feature, A Silence (Un silence), the writer-director has managed to pack all three factors into a single movie, focusing on a bourgeois clan that gradually unravels as past and present offenses come back to haunt them.
Like the rest of Lafosse’s work, it’s a penetrating, artfully made drama, this one starring Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Devos and newcomer Matthieu Galoux, turning in quietly riveting performances. But it also overstretches itself, with too many pivotal events coinciding at once, making the plot less credible while dissipating the emotional effect of its many revelations. After premiering in San Sebastian, the film will continue its festival run, followed by theatrical play in France,...
Like the rest of Lafosse’s work, it’s a penetrating, artfully made drama, this one starring Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Devos and newcomer Matthieu Galoux, turning in quietly riveting performances. But it also overstretches itself, with too many pivotal events coinciding at once, making the plot less credible while dissipating the emotional effect of its many revelations. After premiering in San Sebastian, the film will continue its festival run, followed by theatrical play in France,...
- 9/25/2023
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Big-screen depictions of mental health often lose nuance in favor of exaggerated tropes, inaccurately representing many experiences living with specific conditions. This is certainly the case with bipolar disorder, filmmakers usually showing individuals with the condition in a sustained state of mania rather than the more common occasional episodes. In its earliest stages, Joachim Lafosse’s The Restless, the final film to screen in competition at this year’s Cannes, feels like it’s going to offer a refreshing corrective to some of the more harmful film narratives about bipolar.
This first act introduces us to Damien (Damien Bonnard), a successful painter struggling to maintain a sense of calm while on holiday with his wife Leïla (Leïla Bekhti), and their children. His disorder is characterized by a state of underplayed restlessness—the desire to always be cooking, swimming, often going days without sleep because of his constant need for activity.
This first act introduces us to Damien (Damien Bonnard), a successful painter struggling to maintain a sense of calm while on holiday with his wife Leïla (Leïla Bekhti), and their children. His disorder is characterized by a state of underplayed restlessness—the desire to always be cooking, swimming, often going days without sleep because of his constant need for activity.
- 7/16/2021
- by Alistair Ryder
- The Film Stage
No one utters the word “bipolar” until practically the end of Belgian director Joachim Lafosse’s “The Restless,” but you can sense that’s what the character Damien is dealing with from the opening scene, when a father-son day on the sea takes a startling turn. After steering a rented boat a certain distance offshore, the ever-impulsive Damien spontaneously dives overboard, leaving his boy, Amine (Gabriel Merz Chammah), alone at the helm. “I’m swimming back — you take the boat,” he says, leaving the boy with no other choice.
“The Restless” presents this startling rift in parental responsibility from the son’s point of view, suggesting that the episode — the kind of judgment lapse that might qualify as “fun-loving” in an American man-child comedy but feels genuinely alarming here — almost certainly has its origins in Lafosse’s own upbringing. Like that real-world Laurel and Hardy episode when Mom called the paramedics,...
“The Restless” presents this startling rift in parental responsibility from the son’s point of view, suggesting that the episode — the kind of judgment lapse that might qualify as “fun-loving” in an American man-child comedy but feels genuinely alarming here — almost certainly has its origins in Lafosse’s own upbringing. Like that real-world Laurel and Hardy episode when Mom called the paramedics,...
- 7/16/2021
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
The director begins filming his second feature, the bloody journey of a Brussels subway driver, starring Antonio de la Torre and Marine Vacth. Last week began the shoot of the new film from Giordano Gederlini, screenwriter on Ladj Ly’s recent film Les Misérables, winner of the Jury Prize in Cannes and of the César award for Best Film, but also on Olivier Masset-Depasse’s Mothers’ Instinct, Best Film and Best Screenplay winner at the latest Magritte Awards, and on Above the Law by François Troukens and Jean-François Hensgens. Giordano Gederlini presents Entre la vie et la mort as a urban and contemporary thriller, with Brussels one of its characters, powerful and organic. The film follows the journey of Leo Castaneda. Leo is a Spanish man living in Brussels, where he drives the subway trains of line 6. One evening, he locks eyes with a young man standing on the platform.
Intelligently barbed, emotionally naked chamber dramas about families in crisis are what we’ve come to expect from Belgian writer-director Joachim Lafosse. So when his latest, “Keep Going,” opens on wide, mighty-skied vistas of far-flung badlands, the effect is disorienting — at least, until his characters open their mouths, and it becomes clear that Lafosse’s brand of domestic claustrophobia has merely taken a remote, outdoorsy vacation. An earthy, surly neo-western built surprisingly around the fractious, semi-estranged relationship between a struggling single mother and her temperamental teenage son, this is a two-hander as unadorned and straight-ahead as the bare Kyrgyzstan steppes on which it takes place, acted with doughty fixity of purpose by Virginie Efira and Kacey Mottet-Klein.
Commercially, the international prospects for “Keep Going” — adapted from French author Laurent Mauvignier’s well-regarded 2016 novel “Continuer” — may be narrower than those for Lafosse’s last feature, the thorny, Bérénice Bejo-starring breakup drama “After Love.
Commercially, the international prospects for “Keep Going” — adapted from French author Laurent Mauvignier’s well-regarded 2016 novel “Continuer” — may be narrower than those for Lafosse’s last feature, the thorny, Bérénice Bejo-starring breakup drama “After Love.
- 9/2/2018
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
On the heels of the Toronto International Film Festival announcement earlier this week, Venice Film Festival have now delivered their full lineup and while there’s no Terrence Malick as rumored, there’s a plethora of highly-anticipated titles. Along with the previously-announced opener Downsizing and the expected Suburbicon, mother!, The Shape of Water, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, there’s Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, Andrew Haigh’s Lean on Pete, Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color follow-up Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno, and Brawl In Cell Block 99, the latest film from Bone Tomahawk director S. Craig Zahler.
Also in the lineup is Errol Morris’s Netflix crime drama Wormwood, Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris – New York Public Library, Hirokazu Koreeda’s The Third Murder, Takeshi Kitano’s closing night film Outrage Coda, Michaël R. Roskam’s Racer and The Jailbird, the Kirsten Dunst-led Woodshock,...
Also in the lineup is Errol Morris’s Netflix crime drama Wormwood, Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris – New York Public Library, Hirokazu Koreeda’s The Third Murder, Takeshi Kitano’s closing night film Outrage Coda, Michaël R. Roskam’s Racer and The Jailbird, the Kirsten Dunst-led Woodshock,...
- 7/27/2017
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
★★★★☆ Belgian director Joachim Lafosse seems to lay all of his cards on the table in the opening moments of his fifth feature, Our Children (2012). The action commences with a plaintive Murielle (an award-winning Émilie Dequenne) asking from a hospital bed for her children to be buried in Morocco, before four tiny coffins are seen being loaded onto a plane. Giving away its ending like that may seem a dangerous gambit, but since its inception in ancient Athens, tragic drama has always been about watching the lamentable decline of a protagonist whose sorrowful fate is already known to an informed audience.
The impact of this devastating finale is in no way undermined by a knowledge of the ultimate conclusion. No sooner are we aware of what awaits than Jean-François Hensgens' intimate camerawork is concerning itself with the initially flushes of passion between a vivacious young Murielle and Moroccan immigrant Mounir...
The impact of this devastating finale is in no way undermined by a knowledge of the ultimate conclusion. No sooner are we aware of what awaits than Jean-François Hensgens' intimate camerawork is concerning itself with the initially flushes of passion between a vivacious young Murielle and Moroccan immigrant Mounir...
- 10/28/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Chicago – Poor Halle Berry. Apparently ravishing good looks, fine acting chops and an Academy Award for Best Actress aren’t enough to earn decent roles in Hollywood. Since her triumphant turn in 2001’s “Monster’s Ball,” Berry has had only two big screen roles that managed to hint at her gifts as an actress. Yet “Things We Lost in the Fire” and “Frankie & Alice” were largely ignored by critics and audiences.
Sadly, Berry’s name has gradually become synonymous with cinematic turkeys like 2004’s “Catwoman,” for which she graciously accepted a Razzie award while delivering a hilariously self-deprecating speech. That was a terrible film, to be sure, but it wasn’t nearly as depressing as John Stockwell’s PG-13-rated would-be blockbuster, “Dark Tide. It was deservedly released on Blu-ray less than a month after its alleged and seemingly nonexistent theatrical run. Even Berry’s most devoted fans will want...
Sadly, Berry’s name has gradually become synonymous with cinematic turkeys like 2004’s “Catwoman,” for which she graciously accepted a Razzie award while delivering a hilariously self-deprecating speech. That was a terrible film, to be sure, but it wasn’t nearly as depressing as John Stockwell’s PG-13-rated would-be blockbuster, “Dark Tide. It was deservedly released on Blu-ray less than a month after its alleged and seemingly nonexistent theatrical run. Even Berry’s most devoted fans will want...
- 5/1/2012
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
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