THE MORNING LIST
Father and his daughter (after the sun), a mother and her two sons (A little brother) brings us this week two subtle films about the strength and complexity of filial bonds. An engineer who roams the white peaks of the peaks shares with us his encounter with the spirit of the country. Flush on the ridges of mountain, fantasy, elsewhere, comes differently. Staggering in horror Knock in the booth, or flirting with the undead in Ghost therapy.
“Mountain”: a man seized by the call of the heights
Awarded at the Gérardmer (Vosges) Fantastic Film Festival, Thomas Salvador’s second feature film, mountain, features Pierre, a robotics engineer who has come to present an articulated arm to potential investors in a town at the foot of the Alps. During the presentation, he sees, in the distance, the white peaks of the mountains. While his colleagues return to Paris, the scientist remains. He equips himself with mountaineering equipment and ventures into the foothills, scouting the glacier, attacking the slopes, planting his bivouac in the clouds. As the days pass, one walks, climbs, explores, experiencing this rugged and remote landscape, the nature of which is revealed.
This alone could be enough for the beauty of the film, which finds all its poetry in this retreat from the heights. But Thomas Salvador manages a fantastic change that pushes everyone into imaginary regions. At the height of his solitude, the mountaineer encounters the spirit of the country, thanks to an artisanal effect, reconnecting with the primal capacity for the fascination of cinema. Ma. Mt
French film by and starring Thomas Salvador. With Louise Bourgoin, Martine Chevallier, Laurent Poitrenaux (1 h 52).
“Aftersun”: after the veiled sun of memory
after the sun open a memory book. The last one that Sophie shared with her father, during a week-long vacation in a hotel-club on the Turkish coast. She was 11 years old, father in his thirties. Twenty years have passed and Sophie returns to these images, which we suspect she never stopped questioning. In the hope of finding a clue that may help to better understand the father’s disappearance that occurred after this famous summer.
The enchanting beauty ofafter the sun it is because of the fragility, this hidden sensitivity that the director makes palpable. In particular, I thank the two characters and their performers. The father, Calum – strong body, soft and childlike smile, look of deep sadness -, to whom Paul Mescal gives a magnetic grace. And Sophie (the wonderful Franki Corio), a little woman in the making, as light as she is serious. These two together absorb us in the contemplation of their complicit exchanges, of their ambiguous embraces, of their first disagreements. Everything that could seem trivial to us becomes after the sun fascinating and deeply moving. V. Cau.
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