The first shots of Todd Haynes’s May December (cinematography by Christopher Blauvelt), screenplay by Samy Burch, are of butterflies with one of them seemingly stuck, accompanied by the most perfectly ominous and playful music, which sounds a lot like Michel Legrand. Precisely because it is a variation of a Legrand score (for Joseph Losey’s The Go-Between), adapted by Marcelo Zarvos for this film.
We enter the Southern world by the river - where the trees wear veils and moms bake pies for business and children hang out on the slanted roofs - with movie star Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) during a barbecue. Many mirrors reflect the journey of an actress through the looking glass into the world of Gracie (Julianne Moore), a woman whose affair at age 37 with a seventh grader was tabloid fodder 20 years prior.
Elizabeth arrives in Savannah, Georgia, in understated, carefully chosen...
We enter the Southern world by the river - where the trees wear veils and moms bake pies for business and children hang out on the slanted roofs - with movie star Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) during a barbecue. Many mirrors reflect the journey of an actress through the looking glass into the world of Gracie (Julianne Moore), a woman whose affair at age 37 with a seventh grader was tabloid fodder 20 years prior.
Elizabeth arrives in Savannah, Georgia, in understated, carefully chosen...
- 10/2/2023
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
French actor turned director Xavier Legrand’s superbly performed first feature, Custody, was the kind of debut that budding filmmakers can only dream about. After premiering in Venice in 2017, where it won the Silver Lion, it went on to scoop up a slew of other prizes that culminated with four César Awards in France, including best picture.
In such instances, there’s always a risk of a sophomore slump, though that’s not really the term to apply to Legrand’s second movie, The Successor (Le Successeur), a bleak and tormented psychological thriller that made its world premiere in competition at San Sebastian. Let’s call it a case of swinging for the fences and hitting a foul ball that lands somewhere far off in the upper tiers, so much does this ambitious and well-made but extremely flawed film miss its mark.
Adapted by Legrand and Dominick Parenteau-Lebeuf from Alexandre Postel’s 2015 novel,...
In such instances, there’s always a risk of a sophomore slump, though that’s not really the term to apply to Legrand’s second movie, The Successor (Le Successeur), a bleak and tormented psychological thriller that made its world premiere in competition at San Sebastian. Let’s call it a case of swinging for the fences and hitting a foul ball that lands somewhere far off in the upper tiers, so much does this ambitious and well-made but extremely flawed film miss its mark.
Adapted by Legrand and Dominick Parenteau-Lebeuf from Alexandre Postel’s 2015 novel,...
- 9/27/2023
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
In “The Successor” — a provocative psychological thriller with a lot more actual psychology than the genre typically offers — Paris-based fashion designer Ellias Barnès (Marc-André Grondin) stands on the precipice of a breakthrough in his career. He’s poised to take his place as creative director of the fashion house Orsino, following the death of its eponymous founder. If this were a tale of corporate ambition (à la “Succession”), or perhaps a Roman palace intrigue, here is the moment that Ellias would assume the throne. But instead of feeling victorious, he clutches his chest. The anxiety is almost too much. And then the police arrive.
It’s taken more than a decade, but Ellias has done everything he can to distance himself from his biological father. As such, there’s an ironic perversity to the news he gets right after his stunning solo show for Orsino: His dad, Jean-Jacques, is dead,...
It’s taken more than a decade, but Ellias has done everything he can to distance himself from his biological father. As such, there’s an ironic perversity to the news he gets right after his stunning solo show for Orsino: His dad, Jean-Jacques, is dead,...
- 9/27/2023
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
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