Beau Is Afraid

La première séquence dans l’appartement / la rue / le magasin est un moment de paranoïa génialement filmé. Avec la chair de poule et la bouche ouverte, j’ai assisté au début du film de l’année, un film que j’attendais depuis une décennie, un film qui m’a mis en transe cinéphilique avec chaque plan, chaque coupe, chaque expression et chaque mouvement de Joaquin Phoenix. La deuxième partie, plus légère et plus comique, maintenait encore la barre haute et attisait ma curiosité pour la suite. Mais à partir de la séquence dans les bois, le film a commencé à perdre tout ce qui, au niveau de l’intrigue, m’avait séduit, et il s’est transformé en une suite désordonnée de motifs et de métaphores qui n’avaient aucun sens dans le cadre de l’étude psychologique du personnage principal. Et s’ils sont supposés avoir un sens, le spectateur a alors perdu depuis longtemps tout intérêt à les décoder. (23/10/2023)

Ari Aster et son onanisme artistique excessif. Les quarante-cinq premières minutes et, plus loin, les quelques passages réussis ne peuvent compenser cette durée de trois heures injustifiable, où, malgré l'extravagance et la folie de tous les événements, l'intrigue avance comme si elle n’avançait point. C’est qu’étendre un court métrage de sept minutes à trois heures n'est pas une mince affaire ! Pour son film le plus cher, le studio A24 aurait dû se permettre de taper occasionnellement sur les doigts du réalisateur et de lui mettre une paire de ciseaux dans les mains. Et il est impossible que ce film rapporte ne serait-ce que la moitié de son budget. Impossible. (18/05/2023)

I'm not gonna lie, I wish Aster had stayed on the ground and his new film was more connected to reality. Beau Is Afraid is a bizarre mindfuck, but, on the other hand, I appreciate that it is the kind of mindfuck that you SOMEHOW understand intuitively without having to read a lot of scholarly treatises about it. The beginning is brilliant, the second quarter is very good, in the third quarter the pace drops a bit, and the final quarter is downright confusing. Hereditary and Midsommar struck me as perfectly coherent works, where each piece fits into the puzzle, but I don't have that feeling with Beau is Afraid. On the contrary, I can imagine that certain sequences could have been missing altogether, the final quarter could have been replaced by something completely different, without fundamentally changing the tone or the impression of the work as a whole. Still, a film like no other that has to be seen. (21/04/2023)

Ari Aster and his artsy bizarre mind fuck, and also his weakest film. I like both Aster's Midsommar and Hereditary, he's definitely a distinctive and interesting new filmmaker, it's just that here for the first time he veered away from horror and made a weird genre mashup that only worked for me in the first two quarters, the other two I found weird and boring at the same time. Joaquin Phoenix plays a reclusive weirdo whose mother dies suddenly, and strange and bizarre things happen to him that pretty much make no sense. In short the film is far from reality. I thought the first act was great as there is a nice depiction of the chaos in the streets full of strange people, the occasional dead body and some situations escalate in unexpectedly funny ways, it's one of the best parts of the film. The second act is still okay too, it's weird in a cute way and has quite a shocking ending. The third act is already very weird, it includes animation and the audience's attention falls off slightly. Luckily it escalates by the end, which is unexpectedly action packed. Well, I found the finale desperately long, boring and also unnecessary. A strange film in which, although there is a lot going on, three hours is still incredibly long and the few interesting fun scenes are really scarce. Phoenix played a great role, but I'm glad the movie is over. Of the genre's recent oddities, Mother! and Men sat far better for me. 5.5/10. (18/06/2023)