On April 24, the film editors are organizing another NRC Film Day in the Verkade factory in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. The film editors have selected four new films that have not yet been screened, and film critics Peter de Bruijn, Dana Linssen, Joyce Roodnat and Coen van Zwol will introduce them.
Les Olympiads
The Olympiades are the characteristic residential towers that were built in the early 1970s in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, Paris’ Chinatown. They form the setting for a special collaboration between three of today’s leading French filmmakers. Jacques Audiard (De rouille et d’os, Dheepan) signed for the direction and wrote the screenplay together with Léa Mysius (ava) and Celine Sciamma (Portrait d’la jeune fille en feu†
They found inspiration in the graphic novels of The New Yorkercartoonist Adrian Tomine, also known as the Raymond Carver of the comic book world. In a weave of casual observations, shot in elegant and sexy black and white, we meet millennials Émilie, Camille, Nora and Amber. Their paths cross, they sleep together, and then again they don’t. There is a roommates-with-benefits relationship between call center employee Émilie and teacher Camille, a mistake of identity of student Nora and online sex worker Amber.
The Guardian called the film a “date movie for connoisseurs,” but it’s more of a one-night stand that you won’t forget for a lifetime. The specific architecture of Chinatown contributes to that atmosphere of chance and displacement. You meet as easily as you lose each other.
(DL)
Ich Bin Dein Mensch
Berlin academic Alma has a life’s work. She is convinced that Sumerian cuneiform writing contains more than arid administration, that there is poetry in it. Alma is driven, monomaniac and biting. She once suffered emotional damage somewhere.
In the intelligent romantic sf comedy Ich Bin Dein Mensch love robot Tom reveals it all. Alma tolerates this new invention as an experiment in her flat for three weeks: in return she receives a budget for her research. Alma is single, stiff and unsentimental, don’t approach her with hollow phrases or a warm bath with candles and rose petals. Tom is a fast student: the more catastrophic the miscommunication, the more his algorithm learns from it. Is there perhaps poetry in his zeros and ones?
Director Maria Schrader delivers a gem with Ich Bin Dein Mensch, which wittily raises big questions. Are we happy if we always get our way or are we seeking some measure of unfulfilled desire? Is happiness our highest goal, or—in Alma’s sarcastic words—just “endorphins, increased serotonin, dopamine: yay!” Is there a fundamental difference between digital programming and analog desire? Don’t expect this film to answer them, just ask yourself afterwards. (CvZ)
The Innocents
It probably isn’t such a good idea that Ida’s mother suggests leaving her bedroom door open on the first day in their new apartment. On the wall, a breeze brings shadows to life. Who moves in the summer holidays, the nine-year-old girl thinks. How will she ever find friends?
A regular screenwriter for Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier, Eskil Vogt is interested in recognizable everyday histories, such as his Oscar-nominated screenplay of The Worst Person in the World, but also in supernatural coming-of-age stories. The duo made horror film together ThelmaVogt himself made his directorial debut with Blindin which we seers constantly doubt the subjective world of a young woman who has become blind.
The Innocents has everything it takes to become such a classic as the groundbreaking Swedish horror film Let the Right One In: he is timeless, metaphorical and infectiously creepy. Ida and her autistic sister Anna befriend Ben and Aisha, two other children in the rather deserted high-rise neighborhood on the edge of the forest. And then it gets puzzling, with superpowers that are cool in superheroes, but as terrifying as they are fascinating in young children. Are they manifestations of their emotions and feelings? Do uncontrollable forces become uncontrollable when you grow up?
(DL)
Bergman Island
Already taking an advance on the summer? Then does Bergman Islandthat caresses your face like a summer breeze. The Danish-French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Love was inspired by her failed marriage to the older French director Oliver Assayas. A couple of film makers rent a house on the Swedish island of Faro, where the Swedish film genius Ingmar Bergman used to relax. Chris gets stuck in a screenplay and turns to her elusive, confident husband Tony for advice. He himself never needs her advice. That stings.
As the days go by with writing and cultural forays – ‘Bergman Safari’ – a movie is set within the movie: Chris’ unfinished script? About Amy who suddenly realizes during a wedding that her ex Joseph is her one. Once they met too young, now it seems too late. Or is it? Bergman Island is a melancholy, sometimes equally heartbreaking mosaic of love and longing. Because where better to realize how fragile love is than at the cradle of Scenes from a Marriage, which moved millions of people to divorce? (CvZ)
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