By Roger Costa
FINAL CUT
Oscar winning director Michel Hazanavicius shocked Cannes audiences when this film opened the Festival last year. It is certainly the goriest and bloodiest film to ever open such prestigious film festival. It quickly collected mixed reactions, but its initial misunderstandings are compensated by the ability and weirdness demonstrated in the second and third acts of the narrative. Opening with an uninterrupted 30-minutes take of a slasher horror film within a film going terrifyingly wrong, Hazanavicius presents one of the creepiest, most chaotic and blood soaked horror takes ever made. After this hysterical premise, the film rewinds a few weeks before when they are setting up the production and arranging the final details of the soon-to-be-produced French remake of a Japanese commercial hit. The director, then, shifts the terror style for a satirical take on the film business, fame, Instagram influencers, family crisis, and the subtle cultural conflicts between two different worlds.
Despite its uneven moments, Hazanavicius confirms his master skills for depicting the filmmaking process, which has been a trademark in his career (Oscar winner for “The Artist”). Here he goes fully meta, telling a story that reflects on his own journey as a family member and an industry influential voice. It is very interesting to see how things are done during a horror production, and how people might react when things goes oddly wrong. These sequences are perfectly crafted and performed with intensity by a fabulous cast, which includes Hazanavicius’ wife (Berenice Bejo), daughter (Simone Hazanavicius), as well as the always excellent Roman Duris as his alter ego, the director who at first rejected the material, but realizing its commercial appeal and his daughter’s interest in the leading famous actor hired for the film, he decides jumping in for the gore production.
The result is a smart and original, gory satirical take on the creative process of filmmaking.
(A Kino Lorber Release. Opens Friday, July 14 at Angelika Film Center. Director Hazanavicius will be in attendance for select screenings.)
TWO TICKETS TO GREECE
One of this generation’s greatest discoveries is actress Laure Calamy. Her presence and charisma are contagiously affecting and gripping. Her comic talents are elevated in this charmingly silly, buddy travel comedy helmed by Marc Fitoussi, in which she shares the screen with another iconic star, Olivia Cotê. They play childhood besties who reunite after three decades only to confront each other’s differences in behavior, sexual and social life. But that leads these two women on a life-changing journey from France to Greece, where a few hurdles, and some eccentric locals, will try to disrupt their forced vacation. Their bond only grows big and deep, for better or for worse, as they’ll constantly question each other’s choices.
Add another sensational renowned female star, Kristin Scott Thomas, as a glamorous and mysterious woman living abroad, and there you have it: a summer treat for women and other sensitive audiences with visually striking natural landscape, sensuality, tolerable corny situations, yet full of an admirable upbeat and optimistic sense of humor.
As the women confront each other for unsolved matters from the past, both actresses make the best of it, creating a fun atmosphere, extracting humor from casuality and routine. One is running from divorce and abandonment, she has lost the sense of freedom and the pleasure for the world. The other is just living for the moment, an untamed and adventurous, sometimes dangerous woman who will do anything for fun, even if that means breaking the law.
The director fully explores their chemistry, addressing topics of women liberation, empowerment and comradeship, making it not just two tickets to Greece, but offering us to come along for the fun.
(A Greenwich Entertainment Release. Opens Friday, July 14 at Quad Cinema.)
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