The awards for best director for Éric Gravel and best actress for Laure Calamy in the Horizons section of the last Venice Film Festival recognized the merits of the second feature film by the Montreal-born director, starring a separated hotel maid with two dependent children, who does the impossible to get ahead. Julie lives on the outskirts of Paris and works as head of the ‘kellys’ in a luxury hotel in the center. Just as she lands an interview for the job she’s been wanting for so long, a general strike breaks out, paralyzing all public transportation and putting at risk the delicate balance she had built. She then begins a maddened race against time in which she cannot afford to waver.
“‘Full Time’ takes place during a tremendous general strike that is sweeping across all sectors,” observes the director. “Everything starts to fall apart, just like my protagonist. I wanted the personal and collective difficulties to be in parallel to make it clear that they are connected, that they tell the same story: that one is a consequence of the other. Julie finds herself in the blind spot of society. She belongs to the category of the most vulnerable workers, for whom supporting a strike or having any kind of representation is practically impossible».
Presented at the Cannes and Sitges festivals, ‘Belle’ is the latest marvel from Mamoru Hosoda, considered one of the masters of Japanese animated cinema. Forged in series like ‘Digimon’ and ‘Doremi’, Hosoda went through the mythical Studio Ghibli before becoming one of the most relevant authors of current anime, with titles like ‘The girl who jumped through time’, ‘Summer Wars ‘, ‘The Boy and the Beast’ (which competed at the San Sebastian Film Festival) and ‘Mirai, my little sister’, which received an Oscar nomination. ‘Belle’ combines traditional and digital animation in a retelling of the classic ‘Beauty and the Beast’ starring a 17-year-old girl who assumes the identity of a pop star in the virtual world. Two hours of dazzling animated beauty with a reflection on social networks in which some critics have seen influences from the ‘Matrix’ saga.
‘Goodbye, Mr Haffmann’
Daniel Auteuil, Gilles Lellouche and Sara Giraudeau star in this historical drama set during the German occupation. A talented jeweler and his employee, who just wants to start a family in the Paris of 1942, reach an agreement, an almost Faustian pact, that will change their lives. Fred Cavayé’s film is based on a successful play by Jean-Philippe Daguerre and swept its premiere in French cinemas, grossing more than one million euros in its first week on the bill. “The play dealt with themes that I had wanted to deal with for a long time: showing the ‘bad guys’ under German occupation in Paris,” says Cavayé. “A lot of movies are about the heroes and the Resistance, which is normal, but they rarely show the collaborators or the people who gave up their neighbors out of sheer opportunism.”
#Full #time #premieres