Limbo was shot in color then converted to black and white. Kinovista
The jury chaired by Cédric Jimenez and the critics’ jury rewarded Soi Cheang’s film. A spectacular and disenchanted Hong Kong thriller.
From our reporter in Reims,
Double shot for Limbo in polar Reims. The jury chaired by the director of November Cédric Jimenez awarded him the Grand Prix. The critics’ jury also awarded it. Proof that the people who make the films and those who evaluate them sometimes watch the cinema with the same eyes. In this case, bloodshot eyes. Proof above all that Soi Cheang’s film killed the competition with great mastery.
We thought the Hong Kong thriller was dead and buried by the economic crisis of 2008. The corpse is still moving. If the John Woo, Johnnie To and other Tsui Hark no longer hold the upper hand, the genre still has beautiful remains. Soi Cheang is not a partridge of the year.
A black and white nightmare
Limbo is his sixteenth feature film. He stages a duo of cops as we have already seen everywhere. Will Ren, the young rookie with the look of a neat trader, teams up with Cham Lau, a battered veteran since the accident that sent his wife into a coma in the hospital. The manager, Wong To, a lonely and wild car thief, comes out of prison just when a serial killer rapes and murders women, after cutting off their hands. Cham Lau forces Wong To to help them track down the fetish serial killer in the slums of Hong Kong. The city looks like an open dump, populated by traffickers, junkies and criminals.
Cheang shot his film in color but converted it to black and white. The result is a nightmare like we’ve seen nowhere. Very choreographic sequences but much more brutal than the ballets of gunfights of the jewels of the genre. The finale, under a torrential rain, would almost pass Seven pour un feel good movie !
Before his selection at Reims Polar, Limbo was to land directly on a VOD platform. The Grand Prix convinced distributor Kinovista to release it in theaters this summer. Glory to the festival and to the jury.
It is different withAbout Kim Sohee, already noticed at the end of Critics’ Week in Cannes. The film by South Korean July Jung, worn by star Doona Bae, has been in theaters since last Wednesday. He nevertheless deserves his Jury Prize, as he impresses with his mastery. Inspired by a news item, it depicts the economic and ultra-liberal horror of South Korean society through the ordeal of a high school student, an intern in a telephone company. In a way, another serial-killer movie. About Kim Sohee shares its price with GoliathKazakh Adikhan Yerzhanov, already winner of the Grand Prix last year with Assaultpreviously unreleased in theaters.
Beautiful days to tell the world as it is (badly)
We haven’t seen it. no more thanUpon Entry, also doubly rewarded with the Police Prize and the Public Prize, proof that the police and the population can get along. If we give them credit, then this third edition of Reims Polar has everything of an excellent vintage.
Property, of the Brazilian Daniel Bandeira, also had arguments. He imagines a landowner taking refuge in her armored car when her farm workers rebel. A bloody metaphor for a country plagued by terrible social violence. The Bone Breakers, by and with the Italian Vincenzo Pirotta, is not really more cheerful. In the suburbs of Palermo, poor wretches have their legs or arms voluntarily broken by mobsters to simulate fake accidents and defraud insurance. A true story and a first film which confirms that thrillers have a bright future ahead of them to tell the world as it goes (badly).