🎬 #142 Audiard Can Nail Any Story.
Make no mistake, he is one of my favourite filmmakers and someone I have only discovered relatively recently - in the past 10 years or so. I’ve also done a double film newsletter before on two of his other films, but his talent and skill deserves another. This week I’m doing something rare, by recommending a film that’s only just about to be released. But again, this is a rare film that is well worth the rare reaction.
Happy choosing, happy viewing
Bry
FILM ONE: DHEEPAN
2015 Dir Jacques Audiard
1 hr 55 mins
The partial theme both this week’s films share, apart from being made by the same director, is that they are partly / mostly in different languages to his own. But that never gets in the way of the emotional power that he seems to wrangle from seemingly any subject matter - done with the ease of someone pulling a tissue out of their pocket.
Dheepan is the cover name of the central character who leaves his defeated side in a civil war in his homeland of Sri Lanka. He manages to pose as the dead man and construct a fake family - with a 9 year old girl and a woman he comes across. He yearns to escape the conflict that’s ravaged his home but soon the deep seated warrior instinct that he’s been hiding has to be tapped into.
The simplicity and authenticity with which Audiard constructs his films and tells his stories is really remarkable. There is a magic to his work, again there are no heavy fingerprints of a style per se but more of a feel. Every scene grips you, there is a poetry of violence, there is a casual ease with the camera that never feels like it’s trying. We’re always with his characters 100 percent and Dheepan is no different. It’s a visceral look at people trying to build a new life in a new land, while the old life shows up in another form.
TL;DR: Audiard’s Dheepan is a pounding, captivating tale of a man trying to find redemption.
*Available for a small rental fee on Amazon and Apple in the US and UK.
Fact: The first film by Audiard to win the Palm d’Or at Cannes.
FILM TWO: EMILIA PÉREZ
2024 Dir Jacques Audiard
2 hrs 10 mins
I recently saw this at the London Film Festival and it was my favourite film of the great ones I saw. If someone said to you, that a film was a musical comedy / drama about a Cartel lord that wants to transition to be a woman. You might wonder, how the hell are they going to pull that off and make it great at the same time. Well, as the title suggested — Audiard it seems, can literally turn his hand to any story and nail it with aplomb.
Emilia Pérez is so much fun, this is the kind of film that reminds you what’s possible with film. It ticks off every descriptor possible - musical, moving, tender, funny, intense and tense - in parts action thriller, in parts political thriller. But at the centre of it all are three great characters played brilliantly by Karla SofÃa Gascón, Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez. Feast all your senses on this wild marvel when it comes out, and try to find a cinema to see it in.
TL;DR: Audiard turns his hand to a genre-less film that combines musical comedy drama and more - then successfully lands it straight in the heart.
*Available in cinemas in the UK on October 25th and Nov 1st in the US - also available to stream on Netflix from Nov 13th.
Fact: Based on Audiard’s opera libretto of the same name.