Tag: Adèle Haenel

CANNES21 REVIEW: Retour A Reims [Fragments] [2021]

Jared Mobarak

A war is waged on the dominated. The MIT Press describes Didier Eribon‘s book Returning to Reims as “A memoir and meditation on individual and class identity, and the forces that keep us locked in political closets.” The author never went back home upon leaving until after his father was moved to a nursing home for those afflicted by Alzheimer’s and it was only upon his return that he began to recognize the underlying factors that made its community what it became despite what it originally rose from. By looking…

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REVIEW: Le daim [Deerskin] [2019]

Jared Mobarak

Meet the beast. This is a mid-life crisis. Strike that. This is a mid-life crisis in a Quentin Dupieux movie. I add that clarifier because most people don’t turn into serial killers when buying a high-priced item or having an affair will suffice. But most people aren’t like Georges (Jean Dujardin)—he does all three. Well, strike that from the record too. We don’t actually know if he’s had an affair. All we know for certain is that his wife never wants to see him again. Withdrawing 7,500 euros from the…

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REVIEW: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu [Portrait of a Lady on Fire] [2019]

Jared Mobarak

Don’t regret. Remember. An eighteenth century Italian countess (Valeria Golino) still residing at the French estate of her late husband has decided she’d like to return home. The best way to accomplish this is marrying off one of her daughters to an affluent Milanese suitor since doing so would secure both their futures while also providing an excuse to travel east along the Mediterranean. Rather than hear what the young woman has to say about this fate set before her, however, it’s discovered through her actions instead. One untimely death…

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REVIEW: 120 battements par minute [BPM (Beats per Minute)] [2017]

Jared Mobarak

You can’t split responsibility. At one point during Robin Campillo‘s 120 battements par minute [BPM (Beats per Minute)] a high school girl tells a group of ACT UP Paris members that she doesn’t have to worry about AIDS because she’s not gay. It’s a horrific glimpse at the unconscionable lack of information sexually active teenagers were provided at the height of the disease epidemic during the early 1990s. To see her confident incredulity is to see the danger of ignorance and the importance of self-made, self-educated, and unfortunately mainly HIV-positive…

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