The cinephilia was invited to Lille through a comedy produced by the Almodovar brothers and an absurd series, from the Doubs, eyeing the Coen brothers and David Lynch.
From our journalists in Lille,
“I watched series and films all my childhood. Therefore it seems to me that referring to it in my own creations is, if not unconscious, at the very least obvious. I dream of sequences which would be the fruit of an almost mystical marriage between Fellini, Lynch and the Coen brothers. professes Gérald Hustache-Mathieu, creator and director of Polar Park, black comedy in six episodes located in Mouthe, deep in the Doux. It follows the neo-police adventures of a local writer in search of inspiration who has come to visit a monk, perhaps his father. The discovery of an ear cut off by a little girl in an educational farm gradually reopens her chakras.
Jean-Paul Rouve in “absurdity”
The references rain from the first images. A voice-over comments, Nouvelle Vague style. Jean-Paul Rouve gives the change. Jean-Claude Drouot, historical incarnation of Thierry la Fronde, returns the viewer to the early hours of television. The situations are comical, in the vein of Fargo. And a plethora of images indeed very cinematic. We will say no more, at the risk of disclosing. But the work is successful.
After Under control, another comedy presented by Arte this yearbut also In the service of France, Mytho Or Loulou, the chain digs the furrow of eccentricity. Brilliantly, it must be said, in view of the mediocrity of the vast majority of French comedies. Either their authors lack audacity. Either the big chains are reluctant to go too far into the absurd for fear of scaring the audience. Polar Parkpresented in French competition, was the nice surprise of this Monday.
A comedy produced by Pedro Almodovar
Another comedy, another borrowing from cinema, but more unequal, the Spanish series Mentijas Pasajeras (in French, “lies pengers”), yet co-produced by Pedro Almodóvar and his brother Augustin, who recounts the tribulations of a cosmetic surgeon on the way to being appointed director of a prosperous medical equipment company, dismissed – very abusively – for industrial espionage. How to pay the bills, enormous, of its very beginning of new life? How to hide from her husband, a writer in the hot seat, that she lost her job? How do you keep your head up after such an insult? By lying first. By becoming a crook then… The series, in the vein of everything we know about Almodovar, continues its exploration of the domain of women, couples and families, through a plot that questions with excess the excesses of a society enslaved by its futility.
It’s well done and well acted. Lacks the aspect of melancholy specific to the director of Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown and of all about my mother. However, we are not bored there. The work is presented in international competition.
Lisa Joy’s Gates of Remembrance
Lisa Joy, the sublime Lisa Joy, her black sheath and her 12 centimeter heels… An American (originally from Yorkshire) in Lille and even better. The master cl given yesterday by the screenwriter of Westworld and this year president of the jury of the international competition, confided in her life and her work in front of an audience of listeners fascinated by her story. Normal, shall we say, Lisa is a storyteller, the main theme of the session in which she spoke at length about memory, memories, what the brain does with them, what the brain transmits with them and what intelligence artificial begins to do so.
common thread running through all of his creations, Pushing Daisies To Peripheral devices through the low-key dystopian thriller reminiscencesshe recalls that one of the main obsessions comes from the fact that “Memories, wherever the brain puts them, disappear with the death of the one who created them. How to remember them, if not by telling them through fiction?
Opening dinner in a small committee
The showrunner’s vertiginous sandals certainly fueled the conversation during the informal Series Mania opening dinner. Organized, despite its name, three days after the start of the festival within the walls of the Series Mania Institute, the small committee included a few journalists, the organizers of the Lille event and the teams of the series projected on Monday. A rather lively “à la bonne franquette” with local specialties on the menu carbonade, waterzoï.
As the evening progressed, two titles began to come back in a loop, the Canadian Little Bird and the Israeli innermost. These creations from international panorama would have deserved to be retained in the main competition. More open in this 2023 vintage to spectacular works and general public. Like the drops of god and of Red Skies. After dessert, the launch of the professional forum enlivened the exchanges. The guests wondered about the arrival of the Minister of Culture Rima Abdul-Malak as new demonstrations against the pension reform are being prepared.