2023-07-12 04:26:00
Filmed last year, “The Education of Ademoka” and “Assaut” are released simultaneously. A half-jubilatory, half-tiring concentrate from the Kazakh filmmaker, teeming with absurd finds and gags.
Adilkhan Yerzhanov is a bit like Aki Kaurismäki’s turbulent and bawling little cousin, a Bruno Dumont in convalescence or Kervern and Delépine who would have done maths. All his films progress to the rhythm of a hilarious exchange, a genius find or a lunar illumination every ten minutes. But between each, the Kazakh filmmaker systematically slips in 125 others, of variable, extremely variable quality. Yerzhanov’s cinema is therefore essentially a question of dosage. The Education of Ademoka and Assault, two of the three films he made last year and which are released today at home simultaneously, offer a perfect illustration of this. Wobbly slope for the Education of Ademoka, where a young Lyulie (gypsies from Central Asia) decides, after the dismantling of her camp and a confrontation with her pimps, to go to school. A light story, which is essentially based on its gallery of characters from beyond space, advancing with shots of forced absurdity and fairly quickly tiring gags. It’s hilarious at times, but far too clumsy and prepared for the madness to really take hold.
Quite the opposite of Assaut, which finds a much happier balance with its story of a school besieged by a group of masked men against whom a makeshift commando is formed made up of cowardly, schemer teachers, employees and parents of students. and mythomaniacs, led by an alcoholic who is said to have made Afghanistan. Abandoning millimetric compositions and ramshackle poetry for a more frontal and refined approach (most of the film takes place on vast expanses of snow or in dilapidated administrative establishments), Assault obviously stops at nothing (the opening sequence, pitiless sequence of jokes) but also takes enough breaths and moments of tension to energize his story – and better to trample it afterwards, Yerzhanov taking a manifest and terribly communicative pleasure in transforming dramatic situations into moments of complete chaos (the interrogation at the police station, the cartoonish fights) or, conversely, in images with totally unexpected outlines (schoolchildren running away from gunfire, abstract and joyful shapes dancing on the snow).
The Education of Ademoka and Assault by Adilkhan Yerzhanov, 1h29 and 1h30.
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