Latest news with #CésarAwards
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Case 137' Review: Dominik Moll's Riveting Police Procedural Places Good Cop and Bad Cop on Opposite Sides
'Why does everyone hate the police?' It's a fair and earnest question, lobbed halfway through 'Case 137' by 12-year-old Victor (Solan Machado Graner) at his mother Stéphanie (Léa Drucker) — who has a hard time coming up with a satisfactory answer, not least because she's in the police herself. 'It's not a likable job,' she eventually admits. 'Enforcing the law doesn't make you friends.' He doesn't know the half of it. Stéphanie is no standard cop, but an investigator in the French IGPN (internal affairs) department, making professional enemies left and right as she investigates various cases of police brutality and misconduct — while outside the force, she finds herself tarred by the same ACAB brush as those she's bringing to account. Not that Dominik Moll's clear-eyed, fuss-free and entirely gripping procedural drama asks viewers to shed any tears for her: Personal integrity ultimately counts for little in service of a crooked institution. After a few years off the French auteur A-list, Moll enjoyed a surge in acclaim (and swept last year's César Awards) with his 2023 film 'The Night of the 12th' — an ostensibly straightforward true-crime policier that revealed more intricately ambiguous moral layers as it unfolded. It was a more sober and stringent genre exercise than the playful Hitchcock homages with which he made his name in the early 2000s, and the change evidently agreed with him. 'Case 137,' premiering as Moll's first Cannes competition entry since 2005's 'Lemming,' ventures even more tautly into pure procedural territory, probing one fictional (but compositely fact-inspired) case involving corrupt Search and Investigation Brigade (or BRI) officers to the very bitter end, with little in the way of sensationalism or sentimentality, but a surprisingly pointed sidebar on cat videos. More from Variety São Paulo's Film Cash Rebate Delivers Early Wins, Sets Stage for 2025 Edition Brazil's Trailblazing Film-TV Org Spcine Turns 10 'Left-Handed Girl' Review: Sean Baker Collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou's Solo Debut Pulses Like Taipei After Dark The result should play at least as well with local and international audiences as 'The Night of the 12th' did, given the universal resonance and topicality of its skeptical stance regarding the police — and thanks in no small part to an anchoring performance of substantial complexity and bone-weary humanity by the reliably compelling Léa Drucker. Her character is introduced briskly questioning one officer accused of undue violence while performing crowd control at the populist yellow-vest protests that erupted throughout France in late 2018. He snapped after 15 years of clean and dutiful service, he admits, before begging Stéphanie not to strip him of his job. 'Policing is all I can do,' he pleads. The question of whether he really can do that hangs in the air. Either way, he's one of many such cases, with the IGPN overwhelmed by the steady influx of complaints stemming from the protests: Laurent Rouan's sharp, disciplined editing files multiple interviews and lines of inquiry into a combined, mounting sense of institutional crisis. If Stéphanie tends toward sympathy with her accused colleagues as she investigates them, her next assignment tests that impulse, as distraught mother and nursing auxiliary Joëlle (Sandra Colombo) claims her 20-year-old son Guillaume was shot in the head, wholly unprovoked, by unidentified BRI officers on a day trip to Paris, leaving him with life-changing injuries. The victim's family and friends are unconvinced that Stéphanie can do much to bring the perpetrators to justice — 'Like you'll believe my word against theirs,' mumbles pal and witness Remi (Valentin Campagne) — and Moll's cool overview of the systemic workings of 'the police's police' rather justifies their caginess. But the accusation nags at Stéphanie more than most that come across her desk, perhaps in part because she shares a hometown with the family, but more because the extreme evasiveness and defensiveness of the BRI brass she interviews in her preliminary investigation give her every reason to suspect very foul play. Working against her is the relatively high public regard for the BRI in the wake of their response to the 2015 Bataclan attack — even officers accused of vicious brutality get a round of hero's applause when brought out of custody — and an us-against-them approach to her department by seemingly all other police factions. Her ex-husband and his new girlfriend, both cops, treat her with disdain: 'Your half-assed enquiries smear the whole force,' fumes the latter. Damning video evidence of the officers' identity and their guilt eventually surfaces courtesy of a chance eyewitness ('Saint Omer' star Guslagie Malanda, in a brief, blistering turn) who's initially wary of coming forward — caustically pointing out to Stéphanie that many Black and Arab victims of police violence don't get as much due process as the white victim in this instance. Even with the video secured, however, the case is far from open-and-shut legally: The thin blue line gets awfully blurred as Stéphanie runs into infuriating technicalities and roadblocks from higher-ups. Drucker, initially a crisp, headstrong presence, turns increasingly brittle and recessive as the wheels of injustice turn, seemingly internalizing another, more ruthless question she gets asked in the course of her investigation: 'You do your job well, but what use is your job?' Humor and texture come via glimpses of her home life as a single mother, with Machado Graner (brother of 'Anatomy of a Fall' breakout Milo) excellent as the testy, vulnerable Victor, an early adolescent just beginning to see his parents and their profession through more jaded eyes. An adorable stray kitten introduces an unexpected note of cuteness, leading Stéphanie into the joys of online cat videos, though her father cautions against such distractions in life: 'When everyone's brainwashed and democracy's dead, you'll regret watching so many kitties.' Intelligent, drily seething and duly enraging in turn, 'Case 137' keeps its mind strictly on the job. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
The Guardian
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Actor banned from Cannes red carpet after accusations of rape
The Cannes film festival said it had banned an actor in a prominent French film from the red carpet on Thursday because of sexual assault allegations against him. Theo Navarro-Mussy has a secondary role as a police officer in the film Dossier 137 by Dominik Moll which is to premiere on Thursday in the festival's main competition. According to French magazine Télérama, which broke the news, Navarro-Mussy was accused of rape by three former partners in 2018, 2019, and 2020, but the case was dropped last month for lack of evidence. The three women plan to appeal and file a civil lawsuit, Télérama said. Cannes festival director Thierry Frémaux confirmed to Télérama that Navarro-Mussy had been excluded because an appeal was under way. Navarro-Mussy's lawyer denied this. 'The procedure is still ongoing,' Frémaux was quoted as saying. The festival confirmed the decision and Frémaux's remarks when contacted by news agency AFP. The action against Navarro-Mussy would imply that any actor or director under active investigation for sexual assault would be excluded. It would align Cannes with the César awards, France's equivalent of the Oscars, which announced in January 2023 that nominees convicted of or under investigation for sexual assault would be barred. Navarro-Mussy, 34, who had a breakthrough role in the French medical TV drama Hippocrate, denies the allegations but he told Télérama he understood the decision by festival organisers. In the past, Frémaux faced criticism from activists in 2023 over the choice of the film Jeanne du Barry to open the festival, which starred Johnny Depp. The movie marked Depp's comeback after a toxic court battle with ex-wife Amber Heard that revealed his turbulent private life involving alcohol, drugs and domestic abuse allegations. A French parliamentary inquiry into the entertainment industry published its findings last month, with MPs concluding that abuse of performers was 'endemic'. Inquiry chair Sandrine Rousseau, a National Assembly member for the Greens party, called on Cannes to set an example in stamping out sexual abuse, as well as physical and psychological violence. Navarro-Mussy said he was 'worried' about his career, adding that he hoped the fact the case had been closed was 'taken into account'. 'I have explained myself to the justice system and at this stage have been cleared,' he added. His lawyer said that he had not been notified of any appeal against the decision to close the investigation. Moll, the director of Dossier 137, told AFP he was unaware of the allegations before starting to work with Navarro-Mussy 'and during the film nothing happened'. Moll's prize-winning previous film, The Night of the 12th, tackled the issue of violence against women. He said he was 'very sensitive to this issue'. The ban comes in the wake of Gérard Depardieu's conviction for sexually assaulting two women on a film set in 2021. The 76-year-old, who has acted in more than 200 films and television series, is the highest-profile figure caught up in France's response to the #MeToo movement.
Daily Mail
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Inside the protest that rocked Cannes Film Festival and altered a rising starlet's career forever
In 1983, the Cannes Film Festival was rocked by a protest from a very unlikely source. At just 27, French actress Isabelle Adjani had already won a César award for Best Actress for her role as Anna in the horror-fantasy film Possession (1981). A year later, the star had been invited to the Cannes Film Festival in France following her nomination for Best Actress in One Deadly Summer. However, having been thrust suddenly into the spotlight, Isabelle had become increasingly frustrated by the media's intrusion into her private life. So the actress made the shocking decision to skip the scheduled press photoshoot at the event and hid her face from the media in a refusal to be photographed - souring relations in the process. But tensions between the press and the actress came to a head when the star made her way to the film festival's red carpet. In protest, the photographers then unilaterally staged a strike. As Isabelle and the cast of One Deadly Summer ascended the iconic steps of the Palais, they were met with silence. No camera clicks. No flashes. In a stunning display of frustration, photographers placed their cameras on the ground, refusing to document one of the festival's biggest stars. Only a few pictures of the star emerged from the event, showing her in a yellow sweater with a velvet black blazer, black skirt, cat-eye glasses, and a yellow bow in her hair. On another day of the festival, she was pictured in a black sweetheart neckline gown - also boasting a sweeping updo, a large white necklace and matching earrings. The most iconic images of the 36th annual festival were those of the angered photographers. Award shows are known for their constant flashes and shouting press who are itching to get the perfect shot. However, this red carpet stood out for the opposite reason. The actress went on to win the César award for Best Actress for One Deadly Summer at the event. The actress went on to win the César award for Best Actress for One Deadly Summer at the event - but will forever be associated with the unlikely Cannes protest that almost derailed the event Isabelle won three more César awards over the years and was nominated for another two. Along with César awards, the star has also won a slew of awards including, a Cannes Film Festival award in 1981, and three awards in 1975 - a National Board of Review Award, a National Society of Film Critics Award, and a New York Film Critics Circle Award. More recently, the actress has taken part in voice acting and singing. She lent her voice to the character of Mother Gothel in the French version of Disney's animated film, Tangled. In 2023, Isabelle released her second French pop album, Bande originale. She is also set to play the role of Mona Gherardini in 2025 film, Natacha, presque hôtesse de l'air - but she will forever be associated with the unlikely Cannes protest that almost derailed the event.
Euronews
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Netflix documentary 'From Rock Star To Killer' looks back on landmark French domestic violence case
ADVERTISEMENT In 2003, the murder of French actress Marie Trintignant at the hands of her partner, singer Bertrand Cantat, opened a conversation on the perception of domestic violence in France. More than 20 years later, a three-part Netflix documentary released on 27 March, De rockstar à tueur : Le cas Cantat (From Rock Star To Killer), has revived this discourse and shed a new light on the case. Bertrand Cantat was at the height of his fame in 2003. The 39-year-old singer was the beloved leader of Noir Désir , one of the most successful rock bands in France. Marie Trintignant was also a star. At 41, she had starred in more than 40 feature films and had received five César Awards nominations. French actress Marie Trintignant in 2001 AP Photo Cantat and Trintignant were spending the summer in Lithuania, where the actress was shooting a TV film, directed by her mother Nadine Trintignant. On the night of 26 July 2003, in the couple's hotel room, a fight broke out between the two over a text sent by Trintignant's former partner. Bertand Cantat repeatedly hit Trintignant, leaving her unconscious, and failed to call for help for several hours. Trintignant spent days in a coma and underwent several surgeries. She eventually died from her injuries on 1 August 2003. The postmortem report found that she had received 19 extremely violent punches, definitively ruling out the possibility of an accident. Bertrand Cantat, lead singer of Noir Désir, in a court in Vilnius, Lithuania, on 16 March 2004. AP Photo 'A case of this magnitude, between two superstars, was unprecedented in France', said journalist Anne-Sophie Jahn, who codirected the series. The documentary focuses on the media coverage of the case. At the time, 14 years before the #MeToo movement erupted, the death of Marie Trintignant was not considered a femicide. The French term féminicide would not enter the dictionary until 2015. Instead, journalists called Trintignant's murder a crime passionnel - a crime of passion. The series thoughtfully and efficiently looks back at the headlines that painted Cantat as the victim of his own torments, a man overwhelmed by a consuming passion. In keeping with the singer's line of defence, his family and friends spent weeks defending his character on TV, while disparaging Trintignant for being 'hysterical' and having four sons with four different men. The unknown story of Krisztina Rády Marie Trintignant has since become a symbol of the fight against domestic violence and her case remains widely known in France. However, the documentary also takes a different look at Bertrand Cantat's history of violence through the story of his wife and mother of his two children, Krisztina Rády. Cantat had left Rády in 2002, just after the birth of their second child, to pursue his relationship with Trintignant. Despite their separation, Rády flew to Vilnius to support Cantat immediately after his arrest. During Cantat's 2004 trial in Lithuania, she had assured that her former partner had never been violent towards her, a testimony believed to have favourably influenced his sentence. The singer was found guilty of murder with indirect intent and convicted to eight years in prison. Rády regularly visited him in jail. Halfway through his sentence, Cantat was released on parole and temporarily went back to live with Rády and their children. ADVERTISEMENT Nadine and Vincent Trintignant, mother and brother of Marie Trintignant, attend Bertrand Cantat's trial in Vilnius in 2004 AP Photo However, they did not resume an exclusive relationship and Rády ended up falling in love with another man. Unable to tolerate it, Cantat began to harass her and watch her every move. Krisztina Rády committed suicide three years later, in 2010. Cantat, who was still on probation at the time, was cleared of any responsibility. The series devotes one episode to Rády's death and exhumes elements – Rády's suicide note, a tearful voicemail to her parents, a previously unseen E.R. report – showing that she had endured violence following Cantat's release from jail. The documentary also argues that Rády had lied in her trial testimony under the influence of Noir Désir members who wanted to protect the band's success and its leader. Noir Désir eventually split up in 2010. ADVERTISEMENT By shedding light on Rády's largely unknown story, From Rock Star To Killer paints the picture of a violent man protected by his peers. Over the years, Cantat has attempted to return to public life. He formed a new band, Détroit, and continued to perform on stage. Détroit funded its latest album through a crowdfunding campaign that raised more than €200,000. But in the wake of the #MeToo movement , backlash grew stronger. The outrage caused by his appearance on the cover of popular French cultural magazine Les Inrockuptibles in October 2017 forced the publication to apologise. 'We [have], and this was not our intention, reignited suffering,' the magazine wrote to its readers a week after the incident. "Putting [Bertrand Cantat] on the cover was questionable. To those who felt hurt, we express our sincere regrets." ADVERTISEMENT The Bertrand Cantat cover of Les Inrockuptibles. Elle magazine responded a week later with an editorial dedicated to Marie Trintignant Les Inrockuptibles - Elle In 2025, the conversation surrounding the death of Marie Trintignant is now taking a new, self-reflective turn. The Netflix show is forcing the protagonists of the story, from the media to law enforcement representatives and friends of Cantat, to look back at their own actions. 'In hindsight, I was perhaps wrong,' said Philippe Laflaquière, the judge who released the singer in 2007. He admitted that he failed to recognize the hold Cantat had over Rády. A close friend of Marie Trintignant, actress and singer Lio remains one of the few public figures to have consistently defended her. In the 2000s, she was vilified for speaking out. ADVERTISEMENT "I didn't say too loudly [that Bertrand Cantat had killed Marie Trintignant], I think it could have been said much more loudly and clearly at the time. I simply said what had happened", she recalled on French TV last week. Today, her testimony is an essential part of this documentary, which allows the truth to be heard once and for all. From Rock Star To Killer, which looks back at the case that divided France, is available to stream on Netflix.
New York Times
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
In This French Director's Work, Sex Leads to Unexpected Destinations
Carnal urges drive the characters in the films of the French director Alain Guiraudie toward absurd and sometimes dangerous mishaps. In his sexually audacious narratives, which usually play out in the countryside, the temptation of the flesh is a potent catalyst. 'I don't know if you can say that desire is what drives all of cinema, but it's certainly what drives my cinema,' Guiraudie said via an interpreter during a recent video interview from his home in Paris. That artistic mandate guides his latest picture, 'Misericordia,' which opens in U.S. theaters on Friday. When it came out in France, it received eight nominations for the César Awards, France's equivalent to the Oscars, and was named the best film of 2024 by the renowned French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. The movie follows Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) as he returns to the small rural town of his youth, where he soon becomes the prime suspect in a murder, while also awakening the lust of the local Catholic priest. For Guiraudie, 60, eroticism and death are intimately entangled. 'There are two situations in which we return to our most primitive instincts: sex and violence,' he said. 'I see an obligatory connection.' In Guiraudie's gay cruising mystery 'Stranger by the Lake,' released in the United States in 2014, a young man witnesses a murder and then begins a steamy sexual relationship with the killer. In 'Misericordia,' however, Guiraudie set aside his proclivity for putting explicit images onscreen. 'The foundation of this project was the idea of making an erotic film with no sex scenes,' he explained. 'I told myself that I had filmed the sex act enough, and that in this project the characters' goals were elsewhere.' So Guiraudie opted for characters whose sexual hankerings go unfulfilled and who must deal with being turned down by the objects of their desire. It was crucial to him to convey that people are more often rejected than given the chance to connect, he said, because 'that's the reality for most gay people in the countryside, and probably for gay people in general.' Guiraudie grew up on a farm near the town of Villefranche-de-Rouergue, in southern France, and working-class individuals exploring their impulses is a signature focus of his work, both as a filmmaker and as a novelist. 'I emotionally and sexually constructed myself in that world,' said Guiraudie. 'It became politically important for me to give the working class the sensuality, eroticism, and complexity of desire that I felt it was excluded from in cinema, television and magazines.' Shooting sex scenes between men didn't come easy for Guiraudie, however. Early on, the director preferred portraying heterosexual lovemaking. He found it difficult to accept and depict his own sexuality, he said. It was through cinema, though, that he came to terms with his own desires. 'Owning my homosexuality socially and being able to film homosexual acts,' he said, 'were two intricately linked processes for me.' Cinema, Guiraudie said, has often portrayed sex scenes as solemn and meaningful expressions of deep passion. To subvert that, especially in his earlier films, he decided to approach sex with a lighter touch and to laugh about its inherent ridiculousness. 'Lots of films have sex scenes that are simply a succession of clichés,' he said, because we don't really know how other people have sex. 'Even pornography doesn't represent reality,' he said, leaving us with a choice: either to reveal 'something of our own private selves or invent new ways of making love.' Sex scenes in movies are often hastily edited with jump cuts, but Guiraudie tackles them as if they were a fight or dialogue scene, with a beginning, a middle and an end. 'We choreograph, we work through all the moves together so that we're not showing the sex organs or showing anything that's going to embarrass the actors,' he explained. 'What interests me most is connecting sex with narrative, with words, with normal life.' Like some other French auteurs (Catherine Breillat, for example), Guiraudie believes it's his responsibility to serve as the intimacy coordinator on set. 'It's really terrible that directors use people in that job,' he said. 'It's my job as a director to direct the actors, to talk to them, to be with them, to explain to them what to do.' Stateside, one of Guiraudie's most valuable champions has been Strand Releasing, a longstanding distributor of L.G.B.T.Q. and international films. The company handled 'Stranger by the Lake,' his breakthrough, and his recent titles 'Staying Vertical' and 'Nobody's Hero,' which, though not explicitly queer, are still sexual misadventure comedies. (The Criterion Channel is currently streaming five of Guiraudie's earlier movies to coincide with the 'Misericordia' release.) 'He's certainly not ashamed of tackling sexuality,' said Marcus Hu, Strand Releasing's co-founder. 'Nothing is taboo for Alain — and even when it is, he finds comic relief in it.' That frankness, however, has limited distribution options for, Guiraudie's movies, Hu said, citing the example of 'Stranger by the Lake.' 'We could not get the film on platforms like iTunes or Amazon,' he said. More than a decade has passed since then, and Guiraudie said that he did not think things had moved forward. He added that, though culture was becoming increasingly reactionary and puritanical, he still aims to create provocative art that appeals to a broad audience, not only to L.G.B.T.Q. viewers. 'My goal has always been to get out of that niche,' Guiraudie said, 'to make a universal cinema by showing desires that were not universal.'
