The nice ovation that followed the screening of Simple comme Sylvain on Thursday was not fortuitous. Monia Chokri’s third feature film as a director, selected for Un Certain Regard, generally arouses very good reactions. Among the French critics recruited by Le film français to give the films in the official selection ratings, two of them, from Télérama and L’Obs, even give the only Quebec entry the highest rating. (illustrated by a palm). As for the Anglo-Saxon specialized press, Variety also points out that the distribution of Simple comme Sylvain (whose international title is The Nature of Love) is “impeccable” and that the chemistry operates between Magalie Lépine-Blondeau and Pierre-Yves Cardinal, while noting the nature of a statement exposing some truths, but “never at the expense of comedy”. For its part, Screen refers to a “fun, brilliant and sexy Canadian romantic comedy”. All in all, it looks good!
The Zone of Interest, the most chilling film of the competition so far, tells the Holocaust from a unique perspective, that of the family of a Nazi commander who dreams of a good life in his home of Auschwitz while the gas chambers operate at full speed right next to it. Shaken by a visit he made himself to the death camp, filmmaker Jonathan Glazer conceives his new feature film as a warning, at a time when far-right ideas are regaining momentum a little all over Europe. “We tend to distance ourselves from these people by calling them monsters, but this film addresses this capacity for violence that we all have inside of us. This great tragedy is the doing of human beings doing it to other human beings,” he said at a press conference on Saturday. The Zone Interest will be distributed by A24 in North America. No release date has yet been set.
As often happens for biographical dramas devoted to people who disappeared a short time ago, Flo, a film relating the life of Florence Arthaud presented at Cannes in the official selection, is far from delighting those close to the navigator. This free adaptation of Yann Queffélec’s book was denounced by Marie and Hubert Arthaud, daughter and brother of Florence, the latter also considering the scenario “filthy, worthy of Here”. According to what Nice-Matin reports, it is also aboard the catamaran with which Florence Arthaud, who died accidentally in 2015, had won the Route du rhum that the director, Géraldine Danon, responded to the controversy. “This film is a superb tribute to Florence Arthaud,” she replied. I am not worried. And it is a shame to criticize a film that we have not seen. »
