Il Festival del cinema di Venezia

Film Festival

"Jouer avec le feu', a family drama with a great Vincent Lindon

In competition at the Venice Film Festival, the French actor's splendid performance in the new film by Delphine and Muriel Coulin

by Andrea Chimento

6 September 2024

3' min read

Key points

Confirmation of the directors' skills
April

3' min read

This year's Venice Film Festival competition was marked by several great performances and the fight for the Coppa Volpi seems more heated than ever. On the women's side, Angelina Jolie in 'Maria', Fernanda Torres in 'I'm Still Here' and the Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton duo in 'The Room Next Door' thrilled, while on the men's side, Alessandro Borghi in 'Battlefield', Adrien Brody in 'The Brutalist' and Daniel Craig in 'Queer' should be mentioned.

Vincent Lindon, a French actor extraordinaire who does not need too much introduction and who once again showed his enormous talent in 'Jouer avec le feu', a new film by Delphine and Muriel Coulin, based on the novel 'What is needed at night' by Laurent Petitmangin, is added to this small group.

Lindon plays the role of Pierre, a widowed man who has found himself raising his two children alone. One of them is about to leave home to study in Paris, while the other is becoming increasingly shy: fascinated by violence, he militates in right-wing extremist groups, the exact opposite of the values his father taught him.

"Would I continue to love my son if he developed ideas diametrically opposed to mine?": Delphine and Muriel Coulin started from this question to structure this family drama, which is extremely realistic and credible from the first to the last minute.

One breathes in the current political climate, French and otherwise, within a narrative that also reflects on male relationships and generational differences, between communication difficulties and different ways of observing the world around us.

Confirmation of the directors' prowess

Sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin are two directors who know their stuff and had already proved this with their debut '17 Girls', a 2011 film centred on a large group of teenage girls who become pregnant within a short distance of each other, and had then confirmed this with 'Voir du pays', a 2016 film starring two female soldiers.

With 'Jouer avec le feu' they tackle the male universe for the first time, but remain faithful to their idea of cinema, represented by stylistic choices that bring the camera very close to the characters on stage and by various ethical and moral questions in the screenplay.

A few passages are predictable and somewhat didactic, but the film has such an intense dramaturgical force within it that it easily manages to conceal the possible limitations it carries with it.

Growing as the minutes go by, it reaches its climax in the remarkable final part in which there are also exciting moments.

April

Also in competition was the Georgian film 'April', directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili.

After the death of a baby during childbirth, the ethics and professionalism of Nina, a gynaecologist, come under scrutiny because of rumours that she performs illegal abortions for those in need.

This is the synopsis of a production that opens with an image that is as symbolic as it is evocative, in which a skeletal and disturbing figure moves in a profoundly dark scenario.

There is much to interpret in 'April', starting with that very being who may symbolise guilt, but some sequences are too self-congratulatory and make the vision lose much of its strength.

The Georgian author had done better with the previous 'Beginning', although her good directorial hand is also noticeable here, partly dampened by a few unnecessary shots that risk being too obstructive, given also the decidedly static rhythm of an editing that works in alternating phases.