Film Review: The Takedown

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Category: Cinéma - Movies

Published: Friday, 06 May 2022 01:11

Written by Gilbert Seah

THE TAKEDOWN (France 2022) ***1/2
Directed by Louis Leterrier

English speaking cinema goers have their pro Idris Elba, A Brit starring in both English hits such as THE HARDER THEY FALL, THE SUICIDE SQUAD and CONCRETE COWBOY.  One the European side, French cinema goes have OMAR SY who rose to fame with the French comedy hit UNTOUCHABLE (remade into a Hollywood film), SIMPLY BALCK, POLICE while also crossing the Atlantic starring as Hemall in the Marvel films AVENGERS and THOR as well as the JURASSIC WORLD films.  His test film, on Netflix shows Sy in top form, both in action and comedy, a French outing despite its English title.  Sy is the main one that makes the action comedy work.  THE TAKEDOWN is directed by Louis Leterrier, no stranger to action films THE INCREDIBLE HULK, CLASH OF THE TITANS AND FAST X.  So, expect lots of action and comedy in THE TAKEDOWN.  One would not be disappointed.  As a bonus, the film displays the gorgeous French country from Bordeaux to the French Alps.

The film begins with what appears to be a takedown.  Cop Ousmane (Sy) and his partner break into a FIGHT CLUB type of match in order to arrest a suspect.  The next thing has Ousmanae fighting the star attraction.  The audience is then introduced to another cop, a white cop, Francois (Laurent Lafitte) who has a way with women, but has a problem with his ego.  The two are forced to do A takedown.

Ousmane Diakité (Omar Sy) and François Monge (Laurent Lafitte) are two cops with very different styles, backgrounds and careers. Many years ago they worked together but life took them apart. The unlikely pair is reunited once again for a new investigation that takes them all the way up to the French Alps. What seemed to be a simple drug deal turns out to be a high scale criminal case wrapped in danger and unexpected comedy.

In terms of action comedy, the fights and story (the iteration between two cops with differences) are nothing new.  But there are sufficient surprises that make the film stand out.  For one, the cinematography showing the French countryside is a sight for sore eyes.  The production sets such as the arena in the film’s opening scene are also impressive.  The film is also very funny with director Leterrier taking every opportunity to inject laughs into his feature.  When the police store the arena, they accidentally catch someone at the trash thinking that it is the trash police making sure that he puts the recyclables where they belong.  “I never knew they were so serious,” he comments.  The action set piece with a  youth on a motorbike being shown and his bike going off the bridge with his body splitting into two after hitting high volt wires before crashing down not the train below needs to be seen to be believed.  This leaves the bay in two halves, each for each cop.  Other memorable ones include a chase across the lanes of a  bowling alley, a dodgem (bumper car) chase in the aisles of a supermarket.

THE TAKEDOWN might not be the best film of the year nor will it win choice awards, but it is what it is supposed to be, a fast paced action comedy that is both entertaining and a solid time-waster.  In one scene the cops say “C’es nous, La Loi.”  (It’s Us, the law!).  In the 2019 police classic by Lady Ly LES MISERABLES - the white racist cop similarly tells a suspect: “C’est Moi, la loi!”  (It’s me, the law!)   Ly’s LES MISERABLE was one of the best films of the year, also tackling the problem of criminal youth in the Paris suburbs, aiming for the higher goal of making a social statement.  THE TAKEDOWN does however, quite effectively touch on the racist issue. The film is available for streaming on Netflix.  Filmed fully in French.

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Film Review: My Little One

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Category: Cinéma - Movies

Published: Monday, 02 May 2022 22:06

Written by Gilbert Seah

MY LITTLE ONE (Desert) (Switzerland 2019) ***

Directed by Frédéric Choffat and Julie Gilbert

In films when foreigners arrive in another land, they do weird things whilst they themselves are deemed weird.  In MY LITTLE ONE.  Alex and Bernardo, who are summoned to the Arizona desert by Jade, a woman they both loved but haven’t seen in 10 years.  The opening scene where they meet each other in the Arizona desert seating French should invoke enough curiosity.  The desert is captured on camera in all its barren intensity and stark landscape by Pietro Zuercher’s camera.

Directors Choffat and Gilbert have worked together before in THE REAL LIFE IS ELSEWHERE and MANGROVE.  The male and female team make a good balance at the look of this story involving two male friends who have a relationship with a woman.  The film does not take the woman nor man/s side in the matter.  Each gender is equally responsible.

The most entertaining feature of the film is the treatment of the native Navajo tribe of the desert.  Director Choffat spent his early years in the Moroccan desert and Gilbert, daughter of an ethnologist, spent much of her childhood in connection with different native groups in Mexico, Canada and the U.S.  Treatment of the Navajo is  smart and funny.  The Navajo actors are nothing short of superb, stealing the scene from the European counterparts.  Ruby Matenko who plays the little one of the film title is a real find.  Her dialogue makes her a precocious child.

It does not take a genius to guess the reason Alex and Bernardo are summed to the desert by  their lover.  Jade is very sick and is dying.  She needs one of them, as any one of them could be the father to look after the little one.  This reason is revealed to the audience at mid-point in the film, and unfortunately the film struggles to maintain its interest so carefully constructed after that.  Even the child actor Matenko, trying now to look as a child needing sympathy lacks the spark she displayed initially as the smart-talking kid.

The two men and Jade argue with the predictable drama expected with this relationship theme.  But it is the filmmakers' decision to film in the native Navajo land and the hiring of the Navajo people that makes the film stand out.  Despite a few minor flaws, MY LITTLE ONE is still worth a look.

The film has already made its market debut in Hong Kong’s Filmart and was released in Swiss Theatres.   The film was an Official Selection of the following festivals: Five Lakes Film Festival Germany, Miami Film Festival, International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg, and B3 Biennal of the Moving Image. 

MY LITTLE ONE opens on SVOD ((Vimeo, Amazon US, Amazon Canada and Tubi with additional platforms to follow) on April 26, 2022.

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Film Review: Petite Maman

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Category: Cinéma - Movies

Published: Tuesday, 03 May 2022 20:52

Written by Gilbert Seah

PETITE MAMAN (France 2021) ****
Directed by Céline Sciamma

Mesmerizing, beautiful and magical, director Céline Sciamma’s latest film about loss and discovery from the point of view of a young girl, Nelly (Josephine Sanz) is an unforgettable film that is a must-see.  This is the director that has amazed critics with festival hits like PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE and demonstrated her smarts with her script for the amazing animated MA VIE EN COURGETTE, nominated and should have won the Oscar for Best Animated feature.  

When Nelly’s granny dies at the film’s start, she goes to her home with her parents and meets a girl her age, also long somewhat like her.  As she plays and gets acquainted with Marion, it turns out that the new friend is her mother when her mother was her age.  The film moves in and out comfortably, between times, between personalities as Nelly learns about her mother.  The two often play in the woods, made colourful by the multicoloured leaves, beautifully shot, assumed in the autumn when leaves change colour.  There is immense intelligence and sensitivity and remarkably thought-out scenes like the connection between the two girls while having soup, making pancakes or playing.   The two girls look very alike and it is difficult to distinguish one from another.  The mother has lighter hair and is called Marion while the other has darker hair, called Nelly.  The English translation of the title LITTLE MOTHER prepares the audience for Nelly to meet her maman when she is little.

PETEI MAMAN treats the innocent girls as adults with maturity in their thinking, unadulterated by the grownup world.  Example: Nelly’s secret is not shared not because she keeps it hidden but for the reason that there is no one to tell the secret to.

PETITE MAMAN premiered at Cannes and was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival.  A superb and delightful gem about girls in their fantasy yet mature world!  Film is playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Film Review: Eiffel

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Category: Cinéma - Movies

Published: Friday, 29 April 2022 15:31

Written by Gilbert Seah

EIFFEL (France 2021) **

Directed by Martin Bourboulon

As the title implies, EIFFEL is about the construction of  the Eiffel Tower (le tour Eiffel), the monumental structure in the heart of Paris that attracts countless tourists daily, all year round.  It purports to tell of the story of its construction in the 1890’s but adds up a towering mess of a period historical piece.

It is beyond doubt that EIFFEL, directed by first time director Martin Bourboulon is a handsomely mounted period piece.  Everything looks image perfect from the costumes, props, architecture, vehicles, horse carriages and hazy atmosphere.  Unfortunately, the story of Eiffel played by Romain Duris is rather a personal piece of his romance with Adrienne Bourges (Emma Mackey) overshadowing the building of the Eiffel Tower.  There is a scene at the end of the movie when the opening of the tower is celebrated by Gustave Eiffel himself with political officials.  The camera pans to a glance made by Emma as she looks as Gustave with the impression that she is the one totally responsible for the Eiffel Tower and without her, it would not have been built.  In a way, as the film shows, she has influence over him as he is totally enamoured by her, and that she has convinced her husband to go easy on Gustave so that he can build his Masterpiece.   But she does not deserve this much credit.

The construction and design of such a towering landmark is understandably an extremely difficult task.  The film shows one disaster during its construction with flooding occurring and another with workers not getting paid enough.  Yet these issues are never properly addressed.  Despite the construction problems, the audience soon sees the completed tower as if the problems had not occurred.  The workers also go straight back to work after Gustave’s ‘silly’ talk of going back to work with more pay.  In one segment Gustave changes all the bolts to rivets  saying that this way, the construction cannot be changed.  True, but not many of the audience would know the difference between a rivet and a bolt.  The film assumes one knows the difference and fails to explain the difference that a rivet is soldered and fixed and unlike a bolt cannot be ‘unbolted’ by unscrewing it.   Gustave is also seen with a full beard in one scene and almost clean shaven in the next.  This discontinuity occurs many times and is disorienting.  Are there two different time-lines or is continuity just ignored?  If it is the former, the non-chronological order of the segments is not made clear.  Another problem is the age difference of the actors playing the lovers.  In real life Duris is 22 years older than Mackey and the  difference shows in the film.  His lover looks as young as Armande Boulanger, the actress playing Gustave’s daughter, Clair.

EIFFEL lacks the audience anticipation factor.  There is nothing interesting and the incidents just unfold one after another.  The political, financial and architectural problems of building the tower are largely ignored and assumed solved with little difficulty.  The film gives the false impression that a single man influenced by his lover can construct the Eiffel Tower all by himself without any team of designers, engineers and skilled labour.  And all the problems can be solved without difficulty for the reason that the film demands a happy Hollywood ending.

It is a pity that EIFEL ends up quite the dud of a movie as the film looks stunning production-wise, just as the Eiffel Tower stands in Paris to this day.