Contrary to popular belief, summer movie releases are not (or are no longer) insignificant. In just a few days, we’ve had the chance to enjoy three quite delightful films.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (Quentin Tarantino, USA)
We watched with some impatience, lazily sprawled on the special seats of the Dolby room at Pathรฉ Gare-du-Sud (see photos), the screening of Tarantino’s latest film, one of the few official selection films we missed at Cannes in May.
In Hollywood, in 1969, we follow the tribulations of Rick Dalton (Leonardo Di Caprio), an actor in decline, and his all-purpose man Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt).
The first part is a bit sluggish for a Tarantino, despite the delightful performances of the two star actors. The second part is richer, with a gripping story that fortunately piques the interest of viewers for this very long film (2 hours 39 minutes).
It is a film less comedic and parodic than it seems because it marks, with the murder of Sharon Tate as the backdrop of the plot, the premature end of the hippie dream and “Peace and Love.”
ANNA (Luc Besson, France)
Pure Besson: a girl, a superb Slavic model as it should be (Anna Poliatova, Sasha Luss in real life), is recruited by the KGB during the tumultuous ’90s. And as the lass is incredibly gifted at state assassinations, she naturally catches the CIA’s interest. But a highly developed survival instinct allows her to survive this rivalry.
In a style reminiscent of comic books (and their implausibilities), you don’t get bored for a moment. However, it’s not certain that in our cinematic memories, the adventures of the beautiful Anna won’t get mixed up with those of Nikita and Lucy, other Besson heroines.
MIDSOMMAR (Ari Aster, Sweden-USA).
A group of young Americans, who are more or less anthropologists, travel to an isolated village in northern Sweden to observe the borderline summer solstice rituals of the local population, rural folks who apparently don’t handle the midnight sun very well.
This horror film, also very long (2 hours 30 minutes), without a very surprising plot, is of great visual beauty, and some scenes are both venomous and grandiose (or perhaps the reverse). Almost exactly two years ago, we were in this area of Sweden: in retrospect, given the poor practices of the local population, we can say we were lucky!
