A solid ensemble film about love, death and family, unfortunately let down by its terminally excessive length.
European
Aprés La Vie
From its opening shot of Pascal's descent in a funicular, ‘After Life’ follows the irrevocable downward spiral of his life with Agnés, and leaves it to the viewer to decide what will come after. Better than ‘An Amazing Couple’, if not quite as good as ‘On the Run’, it affords the most panoramic view of the events of ‘La Trilogi’, providing many surprising pieces to complete the puzzle. A compelling drama which forms an essential part of Lucas Belvaux’s audacious series.
Kirikou and the Sorceress
This stunningly animated West African myth will cast a charming spell on both young and old. A beautifully realised, pacy, intelligent classic, bringing magic and reason together into a perfect marriage.
An Amazing Couple
If you can see only one of the films in 'La Trilogie', then 'An Amazing Couple' is probably not the pick of the bunch – but the lightness of its comedy turns out to have a deliciously dark edge, and the bite behind its absurdity becomes all the sharper when seen in the light of its two more serious sibling films.
Spun
'Spun' is a frenetically paced trip taken by people going nowhere fast, caught on a web of their own spinning. More subtle, but no less devastating, than 'Requiem for a Dream' in its depiction of pharmaceutical crash-and-burn, it lets the characters' tragic trajectories speak for themselves instead of preaching an anti-drug gospel from some elevated pulpit. A sleazily compelling insider's view into the nihilistic, self-deluding world of crystal meths.
The Time of the Wolf
With neither science-fiction nor action elements, the dystopian world presented by 'The Time of the Wolf', for all its disrupted services, isolation and anarchy, is otherwise uncomfortably close to our own world today, and exposes the darker side of our humanity. Confronting, austere, and with a fireside climax that represents the grimmest brand of optimism, this is a poetic vision of society stopped dead in its tracks.