These are the releases that hit movie screens this September 8:
Por Philipp Engel
Creatura, Elena Martín's second film, after her endearing Berlin Erasmus (Júlia Ist, 2017), is closely connected to the award-winning short Suc de sindría, in which the Catalan starred for Irene Moray: there she was a young woman trying to overcome a rape, before the sympathetic gaze of her partner, while she browned her body in the sun, next to a lake. In Creatura, the young Catalan actress faces a sexual block, accompanied by Oriol Plà, another boyfriend in the difficult transition to new masculinity, and her naked body, loaded with dramatic meaning, is once again the protagonist.
The film also has something of the wonderful Libertad, by Clara Roquet, who co-wrote Creatura a four hands with Martín. If Libertad was a story of adolescent initiation on the Costa Brava, no less linked to a social issue such as immigration, here Martín returns to the coastal town of l'Empordà where Mila, his character, spent the summers of her childhood and adolescence, two times played by two other actresses, Mila Borràs and Clàudia Dalmau. Creatura is not as fluid, nor is it as solar, as Libertad, partly because of its compartmentalization into three different eras, and also because it is much more disturbing, due to the complex and thorny themes it addresses, especially with regard to the childhood, part in which a plane appears from which a parent will hardly be able not to look away.
And that's the problem. Creatura is not a film about incest, but about its ghost, and how it can cloud the understanding of the father (Àlex Brendemühl), moved by an irrational atavistic panic towards the most universal of taboos. It is the story of a double blockage, although the point of view, of course, is that of someone who suffers the consequences of the lack of paternal physical affection. An extreme case that allows Martín to provide an extraordinary performance of body language, while warning of a danger that perhaps we were not so aware of.
Quentin Dupieux presented two films at last year's Sitges festival, “Incredible but true”, which premiered in theaters in May, and “Smoking causes cough”, which is released now, almost a year later. Faithful to his conception of cinema as a territory in which to expose the most delirious and absurd fictions and do so from a traditional angle where everything seems normal (the protagonists of “Mandíbulas” found a giant insect in the car as if it were the most natural thing in the world) , Dupieux reaches its peak in “Smoking causes coughing” in terms of monumental nonsense. Its protagonists are a group of trashy superheroes (pure and simple psychotrony: a kind of Power Rangers, one might say, parodied by the entire cast of Teletubbies), whom we see in the first sequence gut a ninja turtle, with hyperbolic rain of blood and viscera. The team leader, with whom they communicate via video conferencing, is a disgusting, snotty, slimy rat.
But Dupieux does not tell us a linear plot, but, taking the formula of the horror films of the Amicus production company, a series of scary stories that the superheroes tell each other at night, next to a bonfire, during a few days of rest. There the filmmaker sharpens his ingenuity. For example, in the story of the mask that, when put on, encourages thought. Or in the crazy story (told this time, believe it, by a still-living barracuda while it's being grilled) of the worker injured in a grinding machine, the craziest thing ever seen on screen. “Smoking Causes Cough” is uneven and scattered, but also a stimulating, imaginative and absolutely joyful diversion, especially in a time where ninety percent of films are tame, sterile, conformist and cowardly. And as for his whirlwind of eccentricities, Dupieux maintained in Sitges that today the real world is even more absurd than that of his comedies.
Por P. Engel
In a town, far from the war that shook Beirut in the 1950s, the beautiful Layla lives trapped, like her sisters soon, in a marriage of convenience, until a handsome French doctor (Pierre Rochefort, Jean's son) appears. A classic, but unconventional, adultery melodrama; elegant, subtle and exciting; nothing stuffy in its period setting, which conveys the suffocation in an ancient patriarchy. The debutant Chahine stands out above other Lebanese filmmakers such as Ziad Doueri or Nadine Labacki.
By Salvador Llopart
Thus, in France there is the possibility that the criminal meets his victim to talk about the (un)reasons for the harm caused. Sangla's film accepts, ultimately, that we are all harmed by the system, and that both, executioner and victim, have a drama - a trauma - to resolve. A rich representation of the best interpretation of French cinema at the moment comes together in this film that falls on the side of its interpreters. A rhetorical exercise, of telling stories, yes. But no less exciting.
Por P. Engel
Forget Marvel and their tight pajamas, the Bolivian carnival dancers, with their glitter costumes and masks, are much more impressive. Although what Cabra wants is to become a malache dancer, the gaucho dance, with impressive tap dances like a flamenco tablao. Added to this is the father who is released from jail for three days played by a hirsute Alfredo Castro. And the result is an interesting border noir with moments of certain tension, and others more seen.
By S. Llopart
Pedophilia in the church is the issue, and the issue ends up devouring the entire film. It wants to be a thriller-denunciation and it remains a denunciation with thriller forms. The realization is born with a desire for style, but the message imprisons it and then it rains - narratively - it pours wet. The performers, good at what they do, see interesting characters - the police and the criminal, above all - dissipate in a well-intentioned film, which fails to take the necessary advantage of them.
By S. Llopart
Faith and miracle go hand in hand for an adventure show with forms of terror. The evil spirit returns disguised as a nun. What in the first installment was crude terror, of the witch's train, with scares like brooms, is here refined and stylized. For the better. The terror becomes atmospheric and the tone calms. Until the surprise and action arrives. Logic is not the strong point of this saga, no. Anyone who doesn't enjoy the genre, don't even come close. Fans, however, will appreciate its gentle terror.
Por Ph. Obstacle
Oskar Kokoshka and Alma Mahler's torrid romance was immortalized in the former's famous painting, La novia del viento, where the lovers frolic after a session of intense sex. He was crazy, and she was a woman ahead of her time, eager for freedom after years in the shadow of the composer who gave him her last name. Like many biopics, the film falls into a leaden academicism, diametrically opposed to the brilliant irreverence of those portrayed, a problem aggravated by the inexpressiveness of the protagonists.
