2 May 2025.
ON SWIFT HORSES (LES INDOMPTÉS) **1/2
With her delicate features, English actress Daisy Edgar Jones seems to have been designated as the girl who shines in old-fashioned, novel-based romantic melodramas such as “Albion”, “Voyagers” and “Where the Crawdads Sing”. If those are your type of films, you may like this latest one, which is a bit more daring.
This tale, set in the America of the 1950s, pushes the boundaries of secret desires in sexuality, gambling and new adventures. A young couple are waiting to be married when the smouldering, ne’er-do-well-brother (Jacob Elordi, Elvis in “Priscilla”) of the groom shows up. Aha, you’d think Edgar-Jones and Elordi would be the next love interest, but this story takes a different tack on their attraction. As I mentioned before – it follows a more audacious approach – especially for the staid 1950s.
Directed by Daniel Minahan, the film is beautifully shot, deeply rooted in its retro years, but takes too many side steps into different themes, characters and couplings, which tends to make it feel contrived, as do its almost mirrored love stories.
If all this intrigues you, and it very well might, it left me dazed and wondering if it wasn’t too compressed in its double insistence on the hidden gay lives of the era.
Actually, it’s also reminiscent of the sentimental Douglas Sirk melodramas of the 1950s. It’s just missing Lana Turner.
UNE POINTE D’AMOUR *** (vo French)
This tender, at times amusing, film is about two young wheelchair-bound people (Julia Piaton and Quentin Dolmaire) who go on a road trip to Spain for a specific reason. But they first have to find a driver. And it turns out to be the always charming character actor, Grégory Gadebois.
Their destination is a brothel in Spain that caters to disabled people. This same theme was presented before in 2011 in another road movie, “Hasta La Vista”, by Geoffrey Enthoven of Belgium. The need for the touch and emotions of another human is beautifully handled in both films, this latest by first-time director, Mael Piriou, who was inspired by Enthoven’s work.
If you feel like a gentle, uplifting film, I recommend you go on this ride with these three characters – you’ll come out smiling with your heart.
THUNDERBOLTS **
This latest Marvel blockbuster depicts, on the one hand, ever more action and extreme violence, and on the other, an introspective bunch of depressive antiheroes.
That’s Hollywood’s clever ploy to bring in a bigger audience for its brand new crew of more human, self-doubting heroes, with a touch of humour.
And the critics are raving.
The usually serious actress Florence Pugh (“Lady Macbeth”, “Oppenheimer”, “We Live in Time”) is charismatic and the film’s central figure as she goes on her journey of self-deprecation while slaughtering masses of adversaries as a topnotch assassin. This is a grey, gritty depiction of the coming together of these eccentric killers to create a new franchise for the studios that put money over morality, the new norm in this age of world leaders who feel above the law. As is the other main character in the film, a dubious political figure played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Superb **** Very Good *** Good ** Mediocre * Miserable – no stars
By Neptune
Neptune Ravar Ingwersen reviews film extensively for publications in Switzerland. She views 4 to 8 films a week and her aim is to sort the wheat from the chaff for readers.
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