PARIS, 13TH DISTRICT (A-minus) - Millennials pick their way through relationship thickets of modern Paris in Jacques Audiard's keenly observed and well-acted comic drama. The cast dives deep in the roles of disaffected millennials yearning for a connection.
Audiard ("A Prophet," "Dheepan") reveals a soft side, shooting in velvety black-and-white. He is blessed with both a smart script he co-wrote with filmmaker Celine Sciamma ("Girlhood") and Lea Mysius, and a few fantastic actors. Newcomer Lucie Zhang (below) is a revelation as Emilie, a witty, sensual under-achiever who brings in a new roommate/fuck-buddy, Camille (Makita Samba), who leaves his Ph.D program to run a friend's real estate business. He quickly moves out of Emilie's apartment and hires (and eventually seduces) Nora (Noemie Merlant, from Sciamma's "Portrait of a Lady on Fire"), a small-town transplant who dropped out of law school after being mocked mercilessly over her resemblance to a porn star.
This sophisticated love triangle is actually a quadrangle, as Nora develops an online friendship with that porn star (they don't really look that much alike), drawing close (via computer chats) to tattooed Amber Sweet (Jehnny Beth). This could have been quite messy, but Audiard juggles it like a pro, and somehow no one character gets short shrift.
Camille could have been drawn with more depth; he recently lost his mom and now tutors his sister (a budding stand-up comedian who stutters), giving him shorthand character traits that don't feel fully earned. But Zhang's Emilie is layered and fascinating. She is a liberated young woman but hounded by doubts that she can achieve most of her goals merely through sexual seduction. Merlant, so memorable from "Portrait," imbues Nora with an intensity and anxiety that threaten to combust at any moment. The two women, rarely seen together, ground the film at opposite poles.
The cast also revels in nudity and sex that feels both natural and intoxicating. The coupling is sometimes joyous and sometimes fraught. The carnal connections power a well-crafted plot. The ending was too neat for my tastes, but, overall, this is substantive storytelling
ATLANTIS (B) - As grim as a Bela Tarr slog, this film from last year imagines life in the near future, in the aftermath of a gruesome war with Russia in Ukraine. Until its final moments, this is about as bleak a depiction of humankind as you can present on screen.
Writer-director Valentyn Vasyanovych unspools a post-apocalyptic hellscape by telling the story of a veteran of the war, Serhiy (Andriy Rymaruk), who loses a buddy to suicide, leaves a smelting job to drive a water truck, and then falls in with a crew from a non-governmental organization that exhumes and identifies the war dead. The crew includes Katya (Liudmyla Bileka), a sad-eyed compatriot who helps him deal with his PTSD in this desolate terrain.
Working with non-actors, Vasyanovych gives his world -- especially in light of recent news events -- a documentary feel. Some of the scenes are beyond ghastly. At one point, two men, in painstaking detail, peel the clothes off and analyze the rotted skeletal remains of a soldier who has been dead for at least a year; the realism is not for the squeamish.
The main problem involves an agonizingly slow opening half hour. (I considered walking out.) Like Tarr, Vasyanovych favors long static takes, as his unblinking camera allows a mundane event (a massive vat pouring molten slag down the side of a hill, e.g.) to play out in real time. If you're patient, you may grow to find some of these images transcendent. There are repetitive visual references to fire, as if mimicking this ravaged landscape's proverbial return to the stone age. At one point Serhiy runs a hose to a dumpster, lights a bonfire under it, strips to his briefs and submerges himself under the waters.
Vasyanovych bookends the film with scenes shot with an infrared camera. They represent the extremes of human behavior -- love and violence. It's a neat trick, and it offers a glimmer (but no more than a glimmer) of hope for the survivors navigating this gutted world.
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