A Turkish mother juggling between children and household chores in a Bremen pavilion, Rabiye Kurnaz saw her daily life explode in 2001 when she learned of the arrest in Pakistan of her eldest, suspected of wanting to join the jihad and detained without evidence in Guantánamo. Andreas Dresen’s film recounts Rabiye’s stubborn and rather burlesque fight to obtain the release of his son, which will go through a direct attack from President George W. Bush. If the story is authentic and the subject rather salty – we are still talking about abusive detention with acts of torture – the German filmmaker has chosen to approach it in a surprisingly light, even frankly comical way. The tone and energy are sometimes so borderline boulevard theater that one would barely bat an eyelid if canned laughter punctuated the lines. It has the merit of being unexpected and above all of highlighting an invaluable main actress – Meltem Kaptan, silver bear for best performance at the Berlinale 2022. L.J.B.
Rabbi Cunning Contre George W. Bush by Andreas Dresen with Meltem Kaptan, Alexander Scheer… 1h59.
On the theme of the secrets that women hide in their buns, An Indonesian woman is a film of an almost carnal sophistication, all in languor and rustles evocative ofIn the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai. Nana, beautiful and discreet wife of a rich man in the Indonesia of the sixties, is a mistress of the house in perpetual representation, reigning over a paradise with the false air of eternity. Haunted by memories of the war that snatched her first husband from her, she endures her husband’s pranks with dignity, and even befriends one of his mistresses. Outside, serious political tensions rumble in the background (the future crackdown on communist sympathizers during a bloody purge in 1965). Kamila Andini, 36, is inspired by the experience of her grandmother to evoke the silent humiliations of a generation of women, deprived of a horizon of emancipation. This whispered delicacy, slipping from floral arrangements to wallpaper, is perhaps also her fetishistic limit, but sets the mark of a young filmmaker to follow. S.O.
An Indonesian woman de Kamila Andini avec Happy Salma, Laura Basuki, Rieke Diah Pitaloka… 1h43.
After the big game then Alice and the Mayor, Nicolas Pariser cites Tintin’s early books and Alfred Hitchcock’s English spy comedies as two sources of inspiration for this film about a dark affair of shadowy manipulators run by a wealthy Russian and about to deploy about Europe through the strange medium of theatre. Indeed, the manipulative octopus who intends to spread fake news and desire for extremes in European opinion has found nothing better than the good old Comédie-Française to discreetly infiltrate our suffering democracies. The filmmaker sets himself the task of making the implausible plausible and the least we can say is that he does not succeed. The chance couple formed by Vincent Lacoste and Sandrine Kiberlain is not a bad casting idea in itself, but obviously, the liveliness that should have been infused into the story remains a somewhat forced good mood throughout. D.P.