Ce sentiment de l'été (This summer feeling)

People usually think that movies dealing with heavy subjects are terribly depressing movies. 
But this is not true. 
As far as I am concerned, the only depressing movies are the bad ones.
Movies poorly written, made without love, without care, and that consider the audience a bunch of brainless people. That’s what really depresses me.
If a film-maker decides to talk about the heaviest subject of all, death, I am fine with it.
Especially if the result is so good that in the end not only you don’t feel sad, but you actually feel happy and full of hope: this is the case with the wonderful Ce Sentiment de l’été (This Summer Feeling) by Mikhaël Hers.

It is a beautiful summer day in Berlin: Sasha, 30 years old, is going back home after a working day, but in the middle of a park, she suddenly collapses and she dies in hospital few hours later. Her parents and her younger sister Zoé, who live in France, immediately arrive in Berlin. Their grief is the same of Lawrence, the guy Sasha was sharing her life with. 
In the space of three different summers and in different cities (Berlin, Paris, Annecy and New York), the film follows the attempts of Lawrence and Zoé to deal with this loss, to find a way of surviving and to go back to happiness and life.

Lawrence (Anders Danielsen Lie)

Zoé (Judith Chemla)

Summer is a state of mind, not just a season.
What a simple and compelling idea to use it as the background as well as (almost) a character to narrate this story. Exploring grief could be very tricky: it is difficult to show despair in a natural, profound and realistic way on screen, but Mikhaël Hers has managed to magically do it.
It is a question of light, the light of the summer sun in the apartments, in the streets, reflected on buildings, at first in deep contrast with the sadness of death, and then, bit by bit, illuminating the slow process towards the healing from the pain. But it is also a lightness of tone, there is never a heavy moment in this movie: even when people are desperate, or are asking themselves how to keep going, there is always a hint of hope, a tenacious attachment to life.
Lawrence and Zoé are portrayed in common situations: at work, at a party, at home, in the streets. Dialogues are simple, almost essential, and the connection to these characters is immediate and complete.

A good cast is what you need to express this high level of emotional subtlety and complexity and the film has it: the rohmerienne Marie Rivière as the mother (always a pleasure to see her!), Féodor Atkine as the father, Judith Chemla, with her physique à la Charlotte Gainsbourg, as Zoé and the intense Norwegian actor (as well as doctor!) Anders Danielsen Lie, known to the French audience for his roles in Joachim Trier movies (Reprise and Oslo, 31st August), as Lawrence. 
They’re all great and so convincing!

So, make me a favour, dear readers: if you have to go to the movies in the next days, don't go to see a romantic comedy or a thriller, go to see this little gem about death.

Sometimes, you can find happiness in places you really don't expect it. 

Best Movie Posters of 2015

Happy New Year, my dear readers!
I wish you a 2016 plenty of happiness, of nice things and, of course, of great cinema.
I am not ready yet to disclose my Top Ten movies list for 2015, but I thought I could write an alternative and "lighter" one, just to start in a good way this long sequence of new days: the best MOVIE POSTERS of 2015!
Movie Posters are a real art.
One image could say a lot about the movie you're about to see: it could be funny, witty, colorful, magnificent, dark, scary, it could be a drawing or a photograph, it could suggest the theme, it could remind of a certain atmosphere, it could be extremely evocative.
En entire world in just one poster.
And my favourite ones for 2015 are:
HORS COMPETITION (ça va sans dire...)
MACBETH by Justin Kurzel with Michael Fassbender
It started with the "Coming Soon"...

It continued with the "All Hail"...

It ended up with the poster...

Long live our King!

5. MUSTANG by Deniz Gamze Ergüven

The five Turkish sisters who are not afraid of looking at you on this poster, are not afraid either of living their life dangerously and of going against a suffocating and macho mentality. And they go far, very far, to the point that they could be winning an Oscar because of their courage. 
I feel like running like a Mustang just looking at this picture.
Girls Power!!!

4. DHEEPAN by Jacques Audiard

I am so much in love with this picture.
It is so simple and yet so powerful. You don't see the face of any of the characters but they are all there, three strangers obliged to become a family. The man's hand trying to protect the wife and the daughter from the dangerous life out there, and then the colors of their clothes, so warm, so bright.
This image gives me hope, like Audiard's cinema.

3. THE LOBSTER by Yorgos Lanthimos

As crazy as you can get.
The perfect example of a perfect conformity between the content and the container.
Lanthimos disturbing reflection on the contemporary society and its obsession for couples life is genially reproduced in the movie poster. How ridiculous these people look without the other? How lonely they are? 
One of the best movies of the year by far. Not to mention the poster!

2. MARYLAND by Alice Winocour

I am totally crazy about this poster.
I think Maryland has been one of the most underestimated movies of the year (and I feel guilty not to have written a post about it). On the picture, the vision of what it could look like a normal family walking on the beach, is disturbed by the presence of the gun in the man's jeans (the gorgeous back belongs to Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts). Maryland is a very subtle, disturbing and clever movie, like this picture. I hope you didn't miss it.

1. LOUDER THAN BOMBS by Joachim Trier

This has been an evidence since the very first time I saw the poster, back in Cannes.
These three girls performing incredible jumps in the air and the composition of the picture put together with the title, look absolutely stunning to me.
In France, where the movie has been recently released, the title has been changed because of the November attacks: they have called it Back Home and they put a more reassuring picture of a mother and a son, sleeping close by.
I think it's a pity. I personally would have kept it.
To give this message: our laughs, our being together in a bar or in a restaurant, our friendly conversations, our voices, will be louder than bombs.
Now and ever.
Happy New Year, dear readers!

Louder than bombs

Something strange happened to me with this post.
After a couple of months since the publication of my critic about Louder than bombs, I have received a message from the platform hosting my blog to advise me that I had violated some kind of copyright.
Never happened to me before.
I guessed it was about some pictures I have published.
The post was put in the drafts section and they asked me to change the violation.
The problem was that I didn’t know which was the incriminated picture/s.
I got back to the draft to understand better and I don’t know what I did but all of a sudden my post wasn’t there anymore.
All it was left was the title.
I felt so depressed, because now I don’t have neither the strength nor the time to write it again.
And it won’t be the same post, anyway.
I am particularly sorry, because there was a nice story attached to it.
After a few minutes that I put it on line, last December, I received a message on my twitter account from Devin Druid, the actor who plays the youngest son of Gabriel Byrne and Isabelle Huppert in the movie.
Even if my post was written in Italian, he understood I wrote something super good about him, which was the case (hashtags santi subito!).
His message was a simple emoticon, a shy flushed face, and it was so cute! 

I’m so sorry my words about him are gone forever…
… but well, I guess there’s nothing I could do about the old post now.
Probably I just need to be more careful about the pictures I publish (so difficult to understand who’s the photographer behind the pics you find on internet, by the way… especially the ones taken from the movies).
Meanwhile, all I can do is to strongly suggest you to watch Louder than bombs, a really great movie!