SIRAT: A Rave in the Labyrinth

                  SIRAT, or How to Rave in the Face of Death

Ah, Cannes, that great lottery of taste. 

This year the Jury Prize went to SIRAT, a film that takes on nothing less than the ephemerality of life and the absurdity of death. 

Noble, yes. Necessary, even. 

So what’s the story of SIRAT? 

Well, “story” might be too generous a word. 

Imagine this: a group of beautiful thirty-somethings, allergic to work and sobriety, decide that the only way to confront the terrifying absurdity of death is… to party harder. 

They set off on a psychedelic odyssey through the deserts of Northern Africa, taking “bio” drugs (because chemicals are sooo last century) while dancing like their life insurance depends on it.

Somewhere in the middle of this eternal rave, the Minotaur appears—yes, a literal Minotaur, because nothing says “meaning of life” like Greek mythology crashing your techno set. 

Played by the immense Sergi López, he alone seems aware that this labyrinth of strobe lights and sweaty hugs could actually be about something. He is looking for his daughter and grabs on to the only bit of family that remained to him.

The others? Mostly busy staring at the sky, kissing each other’s foreheads, and muttering lines so clumsy they make fortune cookies sound like Shakespeare.

The message? Life is short, death is absurd, so ditch responsibility, skip society, and dance barefoot in glitter until the end arrives. 

A philosophy that sounds thrilling at 2 a.m.—slightly less so the next morning when your rent is due.

Socrates must be spinning in his grave, though admittedly he might have enjoyed the light show.

Visually, it’s a treat. 

The cinematography is gorgeous, the camera so fluid it almost dances, the images poetic enough to make Instagram jealous. For a few moments, you feel like you’re floating in a golden dream. 

And then someone speaks. 

The poor non-professional actors, required to deliver only a handful of lines, manage to treat each word like an Olympic hurdle. 

It’s painful, but also—ironically—almost in theme: nothing lasts, not even coherent dialogue.

Sergi López, what a gift. 

Where the others stumble, he roars. 

Where the film flirts with superficiality, he digs deep. 

His presence is immense, magnetic, unforgettable. 

He doesn’t just act; he rescues the entire enterprise from collapsing under its own strobe lights.

  SIRAT will fade, but Sergi will stay with you.

But the real show came at the Q&A at the MK2 Quai de Seine in Paris.

The director, asked the most basic question—why the title “SIRAT”?—embarked on an odyssey of awkwardness. 

For context: “Sirat” in Islamic tradition refers to the bridge of judgment, stretched perilously thin between heaven and hell, the path of ultimate destiny. A title dripping with philosophical weight, perfect for a film about life and death. 

And the director’s explanation? He chose it because...it “sounded melodious.” That’s it. The bridge of eternity reduced to a catchy jingle. 

One imagines Dante rolling his eyes in the seventh circle.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team stumbled on stage, visibly high or drunk, and turned the discussion into a half-slurred cocktail of leftist slogans and anti-Israel declarations.

 The audience’s mild goodwill evaporated like spilled prosecco. 

The aftertaste was less cinéma vérité than karaoke politique.

In the end, SIRAT is like a festival night you only half-remember: flashes of beauty, lots of noise, a lingering headache, and one incredible performer you’ll never forget. 

The rave fades, but Sergi López—immense as always—remains.

By Giulia Dobre

in Montpellier

Chronicle of Mirros No3 (Petzhold’s Domestic Opera of Nothingness)

 Mirros No3, or How to Die of Drama Without Really Dying

If cinema is a mirror held up to life, then Mirros No3 is more like one of those mirrors in a faded provincial carnival: warped, wobbling, leaving you with the faint suspicion that the operator ran off with your ticket money.

Petzhold’s Mirros No3 arrives wrapped in mystery. The title alone suggests labyrinths of reflections, terrible secrets, perhaps a gothic chamber where truth fractures like glass.

 One enters the cinema braced for horror, for scandal, for something so dirty that it will never wash out.

And then… we get a family drama.

 Yes, there is a death, and yes, there is trauma—but Petzhold treats these like a stern schoolteacher who confiscates the candy just before recess. 

The scandal never arrives. Instead, we sit at the table of grief with relatives who speak in ellipses, drink mineral water with great intensity, and stare at each other as if hypnotized by Ikea lamps.

The main feast is, of course, Barbara Auer. A very fine actress who here seems guided by acting direction from the school of “More! Louder! Pretend you are Medea even when asking for the TV remote!” 

She storms and trembles with the force of a Wagner soprano, bringing operatic fury to a role that demands, at most, a resigned sigh. 

The effect is so theatrical that one half-expects surtitles to appear at the bottom of the screen.

 Out of place? Out of orbit. It’s not acting—it’s a cosmic event.

And then hovering like a cinematic law of gravity: Paula Beer. 

She appears once again, as she does in approximately 75% of all German productions. Beer has become the universal plug-in actress for every female character between 18 and 80.

 Daughter? Beer. Mother? Beer. Grandmother with arthritis and a secret garden? Beer with a shawl. She is omnipresent, the patron saint of German melancholy.

In Mirros No3, she floats through the frames like wallpaper—beautiful wallpaper, yes, but wallpaper all the same.

So what do we get when you mix Auer’s thunderclap melodrama with Beer’s inevitable ubiquity and Petzhold’s barren script?

 A film that promises a dirty secret and delivers instead a family melodrama reheated from last week’s leftovers. A death, a trauma, a table covered in tense silences—and acting so overwrought it practically shakes the projector.

In the end, Mirros No3 is less a movie than a mirror held up to German cinema itself: cracked, theatrical, omnipresently Beer-flavored, and barren of scandal.

 You expect sin and skeletons, and you walk away with tepid grief in porcelain cups. 

Funky, yes. 

Amusing, accidentally so.

BY Giulia Dobre

ALPHA : The film that squints more than its heroine

ALPHA by Julia Ducournau: When Cinema Goes Off the Rails (and Without a Helmet)

There are films that leave you speechless.

And then there's ALPHA, the latest UFO from Julia Ducournau, which rather leaves you with a sigh, a few headaches, and an irrepressible desire to watch a good old Fast & Furious just to regain a sense of the word "structure."

After the thunderous Titane, Palme d'Or at Cannes three years ago — a mix of body horror, V8 engine, and deviant poetry — we were naturally expecting Ducournau to take a turn.

And indeed she did. Very strongly. So strongly that she left the artistic road to dash headlong into a conceptual concrete wall.

Mise-en-scene? What mise-en-scene?

Here, the camera seems lost, disoriented, like a drone with a GPS malfunction. We never know if Ducournau is directing her film or if it’s the film that is directing her.

It trembles, it wobbles, it spins around emptiness with blind confidence.

The slightest shot seems to scream: 'Look how significant I am!' when it means nothing, or worse: it mimics intelligence without ever invoking it.

Aesthetically... it's a no.

ALPHA is ugly.

Not ugly in a disturbing or transgressive sense.

Ugly like a failed contemporary installation in a municipal hall: drab colors, flat lighting, gray-blue filters seen a thousand times, and a sense of composition that could be entrusted to an intern on acid.

The film seems to believe that ugliness = boldness.

But no.

Ugliness without an idea = laziness.

And the actors...

We don't blame them, but it's hard not to notice that the casting seems to have been done backwards.

The faces are chosen not for their expressiveness, but for their ability to illustrate an aesthetic manifesto: 'the stranger you are, the more you have your place.'

This could work if the story followed, but unfortunately, it does not.

Charisma is absent, the dialogues are flat, and the emotion, when it dares to peek in, is immediately crushed under an avalanche of clumsy symbols.

A pre-teen heroine who is cross-eyed towards... what exactly?

At the center of the film, a girl in crisis. She is cross-eyed (literally), she is restless, she rushes through the stages of puberty with the grace of a bulldozer.

She is vulgar, loud, and unsympathetic — but not in the fascinating way of Mathilda from Léon.

No, just unpleasant.

And since the story follows no logic (neither emotional nor narrative), we end up losing interest.

An hour and thirty minutes of flacid chaos, where one desperately searches for a red thread, a theme, a stake.

Nothing.

Narrative nothingness wrapped in arty aluminum foil.

Politically correct, festival-style.

Impossible to ignore the casting that was clearly designed to check all the boxes of woke bingo.

Tahar Rahim lost 30 kilos for his role in ALPHA, probably to measure up to the abyssal void of his character — a ghost wandering between two scenes, as useless to the narrative as a semicolon in a text.

Golshifteh Farahani, the Iranian-Kurdish Monica Belucci, seems to have confused ALPHA with a kitschy adaptation of Medeea, delivering a performance as grandiloquent as if she were playing a Greek tragedy... in a poorly lit basement, with papier-mâché dialogues.

Diversity, fluidity, inclusion…

Very well.

But it still needs to serve a story, a purpose, a coherence.

Here, it looks more like a demonstration than a sincere intention.

In trying to please everyone, ALPHA ends up touching no one.

And ultimately resembles a soulless ideological collage.

Conclusion: back to square one.

ALPHA is a bit like those contemporary art pieces that you stand in front of for five minutes, wondering if it’s us who are idiots or if it’s just bad.

Spoiler: sometimes, it’s just bad.

Ducournau promised us a slap.

What we get is a soft slap, poorly framed, delivered with the left hand.

The saddest part is that beneath the chaos and the directorial ticks, one can guess that there might have been a real film to be made...

But ALPHA, in its current state, is neither a film, nor an experience, nor even a provocation.

It’s an author’s whim, disguised as a radical work.

And, as often happens with whims,

we come away feeling that

we’ve wasted our time.

By Giulia Dobre

ALPHA : Le Film Qui Louche Plus Que Son Héroïne

 

ALPHA de Julia Ducournau : Quand le cinéma part en roue libre (et sans casque)

Il y a des films qui vous laissent sans voix. 

Et puis il y a ALPHA, le dernier OVNI de Julia Ducournau, qui vous laisse plutôt avec un soupir, quelques maux de tête, et cette envie irrépressible de revoir un bon vieux Fast & Furious juste pour retrouver le sens du mot "structure".

Après le coup de tonnerre Titane, Palme d’Or à Cannes il y a trois ans — mélange de body horror, moteur V8 et poésie déviante — on attendait forcément Ducournau au tournant. 

Et bien elle a tourné. Très fort. 

Tellement fort qu’elle a quitté la route artistique pour foncer tout droit dans un mur conceptuel en béton armé.

Mise en scène ? Quelle mise en scène ?

Ici, la caméra semble perdue, désorientée, comme un drone en panne de GPS. 

On ne sait jamais si Ducournau dirige son film ou si c’est le film qui la dirige. 

Ça tremble, ça vacille, ça tourne autour du vide avec une confiance aveugle. Le moindre plan semble hurler : "Regardez comme je suis signifiant !" alors qu’il ne signifie rien, ou pire : il mime l’intelligence sans jamais la convoquer.

Esthétiquement... c’est non.

ALPHA est laid. 

Pas laid au sens dérangeant ou transgressif. Laid comme une installation contemporaine ratée dans une salle municipale : couleurs baveuses, éclairages plats, filtres gris-bleutés vus mille fois, et un sens de la composition qu’on pourrait confier à un stagiaire sous acide. 

Le film semble croire que laideur = audace. 

Mais non. 

Laideur sans idée = paresse.

Et les acteurs...

On ne leur jette pas la pierre, mais difficile de ne pas remarquer que le casting semble avoir été fait à l’envers. 

Les visages sont choisis non pour leur expressivité, mais pour leur capacité à illustrer un manifeste esthétique : "plus tu es étrange, plus tu as ta place". 

Ce qui pourrait fonctionner si le jeu suivait, mais hélas, non. 

Le charisme est aux abonnés absents, les dialogues sont plats, et l’émotion, quand elle ose pointer le bout du nez, est immédiatement écrasée sous une avalanche de symboles lourdingues.

Une héroïne pré-ado qui louche vers... quoi au juste ?

Au centre du film, une jeune fille en crise. Elle louche (littéralement), elle s’agite, elle brûle les étapes de la puberté avec la grâce d’un bulldozer. 

Elle est vulgaire, bruyante, antipathique — mais pas de cette manière fascinante à la Mathilda de Léon. 

Non, juste désagréable. 

Et comme l’histoire ne suit aucune logique (ni émotionnelle, ni narrative), on finit par décrocher. 

Une heure trente de chaos flasque, où l’on cherche désespérément un fil rouge, un thème, un enjeu. 

Rien.

 Le néant narratif emballé dans du papier alu arty.

Le politiquement correct sauce festival.

Impossible d’ignorer le casting visiblement pensé pour cocher toutes les cases du bingo woke. 

Tahar Rahim a perdu 30 kilos pour son rôle dans ALPHA, sans doute pour être à la hauteur du vide abyssal de son personnage — un fantôme errant entre deux scènes, aussi inutile au récit qu’un point-virgule dans un texto.

Golshifteh Farahani, la Monica Belucci irano-kurde, semble avoir confondu ALPHA avec une adaptation de Médée à la sauce kitsch, livrant une performance aussi grandiloquente que si elle jouait une tragédie grecque... dans un sous-sol mal éclairé, avec des dialogues en papier mâché.

Diversité, fluidité, inclusion… Très bien. 

Mais encore faut-il que cela serve une histoire, un propos, une cohérence.

 Ici, ça ressemble davantage à une démonstration qu’à une intention sincère. 

À force de vouloir plaire à tout le monde, ALPHA ne touche personne. 

Et finit par ressembler à un collage idéologique sans âme.

Conclusion : retour à la case départ.

ALPHA, c’est un peu comme ces œuvres d’art contemporain devant lesquelles on reste cinq minutes, en se demandant si c’est nous qui sommes idiots ou si c’est juste nul. 

Spoiler : parfois, c’est juste nul. 

Ducournau nous avait promis une claque. 

On se retrouve avec une gifle molle, mal cadrée, donnée avec la main gauche.

Le plus triste, c’est que sous le chaos et les tics de mise en scène, on devine qu’il y avait peut-être un vrai film à faire. 

Mais ALPHA, en l’état, n’est ni un film, ni une expérience, ni même une provocation.

C’est un caprice d’auteur déguisé en œuvre radicale. 

Et, comme souvent avec les caprices, 

on en ressort avec l’impression 

d’avoir perdu son temps.

Par Giulia Dobre

How to Lose Friends and Alienate Gifts: A Trier Guide

 

               Reality Bites, Fiction Hugs 

             (with Stellan Skarsgård)

    There are films that you watch… and there are films that politely take your soul, turn it upside down, and then invite it out for coffee.

 Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value belongs firmly to the latter category.

Three people and one ghost of a past gather in a house: a legendary actor (Stellan Skarsgård) who refuses to grow old gracefully, his daughter (Renate Reinsve) who can say more with one sigh than most people manage in a TED Talk, and Elle Fanning, who shows up like a bittersweet question mark in the middle of their emotional Scrabble game.

They talk, they clash, they love, they regret. 

In short: it’s a family reunion where the main dish is existential crisis, served warm with a side of laughter and tears.

By the end, you realize the moral: don’t refuse love, friendship, or even roles in strange little films—because unlike Netflix recommendations, those chances don’t come back.

At the heart of it all stands Stellan Skarsgård, in a performance so magnetic that one half-expects the other actors to start orbiting around him like confused satellites. 

He doesn’t just act—he smuggles entire emotional landscapes onto the screen with the ease of a man opening a sardine tin. 

His presence alone could make a phone book reading feel like Shakespearean tragedy.

 Stellan Skarsgård delivers a performance so good it should be illegal in at least three countries. 

He doesn’t just act—he casually detonates emotional bombs while pretending it’s just another Tuesday. 

Honestly, if gravity had feelings, Skarsgård would be the one pulling them down to earth.

But Stellan is not alone in this emotional heist. 

Renate Reinsve delivers interiorized, fabulous acting of the kind that makes you lean in closer, afraid you’ll miss the micro-expression that just shattered your heart. 

She can turn silence into dialogue, a glance into an essay. One day someone will write a PhD thesis on her ability to communicate the end of the world with just an eyebrow.

And then there’s Elle Fanning, who offers a wonderfully bittersweet interpretation, like a cocktail that starts sweet, slides into sour, and ends by leaving you tipsy with existential regret. 

She is sunshine and storm in the same frame—reminding us that joy and pain are often roommates who refuse to pay separate rent.

But here’s the kicker: the film quietly points out the terrible human habit of refusing what’s offered—love, friendship, a role in a film, or simply the last slice of pizza.

 Spoiler: those gifts don’t come back. They vanish forever, like socks in a washing machine. Pride may keep your hands clean, but it leaves your heart rather empty.

Beyond the performances, the film whispers (or perhaps yells, depending on your personal level of stubbornness) a cautionary tale: refusing what others give us, may seem like an act of proud independence, but it is in fact a first-class ticket to regret.

What Trier does so devilishly well is blur the line between fiction and reality. 

Reality, after all, is often stranger, sharper, and more unrelenting than any script.

 But fiction has its secret power: it can hold up the unbearable truths of reality, give them a neat frame, and let us sit in the dark, safe, while the therapeutic magic does its work. 

It hurts—yes. But it hurts beautifully.

 In short: reality punches you in the gut; fiction gives you a bruise and then a hug.

Sentimental Value is Trier’s playful proof that you can stand in Bergman’s shadow without getting a sunburn.

Existential family drama, yes, but now with Wi-Fi, better haircuts, and the occasional laugh.

If Bergman’s films were like being locked in a chilly Swedish cabin with your innermost fears, Trier’s Sentimental Value is the same cabin—but someone remembered to bring wine, music, and Elle Fanning.

So, is Sentimental Value a comedy, a tragedy, or a therapy session disguised as cinema?

 The answer is: yes. 

Sentimental Value is equal parts therapy, tragedy, and comedy. 

Just remember: when life offers you something, take it. 

Especially if it’s a film starring Stellan Skarsgård.

By Giulia Dobre

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