The French-language film festival opened last night with a contemporary drama about bereavement and family reconstruction, by Guillaume Nicloux. A success.
A free electron who regularly likes to change register, Guillaume Nicloux returns a few months after the violent horror thriller Tower to a more sober and peaceful melodrama but no less rich in contemporary themes. Adapted from the novel by Fanny Chesnel, The cradle, the film follows the footsteps of Joseph, a widowed and solitary cabinetmaker who learns of the accidental death of his son and his companion. The couple were expecting a child from a surrogate mother living in Belgium and Joseph decides against the advice of those around him to go in search of this young woman to convince her that he can take care of this baby, which he will theoretically be. Grand father. Attracted by the subjects of mourning and resilience, the filmmaker treats his story with restraint, focusing on the encounter between two beings who seem to be opposed by everything (a taciturn sixty-something and an anxious surrogate mother played by the excellent Mara Taquin) but who will have to find common ground. Addressing the legal status of surrogacy in the background and highlighting the protagonists’ rebirth of hope and vital energy, the filmmaker gives a golden role to Fabrice Luchini and takes full advantage of the haggard sweetness of which is able the actor. Nicloux thus enjoys drawing, with a salutary absence of irony, a luminous hero who wants to ward off fate to repair his intimate wounds. And the film deploys from start to finish an almost too demonstrative but highly comforting humility.
Of Guillaume Nicloux With Fabrice Luchini, Mara Taquin, Maud Wyler… Duration 1h32. Released September 20, 2023
#Angoulême #Day #Luchini #amazingly #sober #Petite
