Case 137 

The great French actress Léa Drucker adds another sharply-etched characterization to her résumé as Stéphanie, an internal-affairs investigator in the Paris police force on a case of police brutality during the “yellow jacket” protests of 2018 in Dominic Moll’s low-key procedural that persuasively encompasses the complicated political aspects of class and race hanging over the investigation.

 

 

Drucker is unwaveringly good whether subtly taking the temperature of those she’s looking into or handling her skeptical ex-husband (a fellow cop), loving young son, and cantankerous mother. A top-notch supporting cast and Moll’s documentary-like visuals strongly contribute to this deeply moral, unnerving drama. 

 

 

 

In Cédric Klapisch’s latest drama, four cousins meeting for the first time explore their celebrated ancestor Adèle’s home—as we meet Adèle herself (a fine Suzanne Lindon) as she leaves the sticks for Paris at the zenith of the 1890s Belle Époque and befriends artists like Claude Monet, who ends up having more to do with the extended family than expected.

 

 

Typically flavorful and spirited, lavish but not overstuffed, Klapisch’s film might be schematic in its crosscutting between the present-day cousins’ endless zoom calls about Adèle’s valuables—including a painting that may have a surprising provenance—and her adventures in the dazzling city of lights, but it’s a delight from start to finish. 

 

 

 

Festival Film of the Week/True-False Film Fest

This entry in the annual nonfiction film festival in Columbia, Missouri (the latest edition ran March 5-8) takes the pulse of the UPS workers preparing for—and, in many cases, dreading—a possible strike when the Teamsters contract with management ends in the summer of 2023.

 

 

Yael Bridge—who has made other films chronicling labor strife in America—provides an honest if necessarily one-sided chronicle of how so many workers who rely on their paycheck to get by respond to the possibility of losing money (and maybe more) for an important cause in a country that has been steadily, often ruthlessly whittling back workers’ rights at the expense of their corporate bosses’.  

 

 

 

Streaming Release of the Week 

French director Luc Besson returns with this downbeat, mostly colorless adaptation of the Bram Stoker classic, with Caleb Landry-Jones hamming it up mightily as the Count—his spectacularly grotesque makeup is the memorable part of the character.

 

 

Surprisingly—but in a good way—noted scenery chewer Christoph Waltz gives a nice low-key turn as the priest (Van Helsing in all but name) who tracks Dracula down, while Zoë Bleu plays Mina, Dracula’s paramour, with satisfying brio. Besson, a veteran of large-scale canvases, seems to have come a cropper with this umpteenth version of a well-worn tale, as he brings to it little energy or vitality. 

 

 

 

 

In-Theater Release of the Week

Amy Landecker makes her triple-threat debut as writer, director and star in this agreeable romantic comedy about Lauren, a newly divorced woman who begins an on- and off-again relationship with Sean, a much younger man in her acting class, until they attend a wedding that marks a real turning point in her life.

 

 

Although much of this is mined for superficial comedy—Lauren’s ex has a hot yoga instructor as a girlfriend, Lauren’s best friend Jessi (a funny Missi Pyle) very much wants her to take the plunge with Sean, and the classes are led by no-nonsense instructor Liz (a too dour Gaby Hoffman)—Landecker makes an appealing heroine and as a filmmaker finds her feet in the second half, when Lauren meets two men with opposite designs on her (played by Landecker’s own husband, Bradley Whitford, and Ken Marino, the latter amusing in an obnoxious role).