A student and a police officer, two films to forget

What will have led to Michael Gondrythe director of that little miracle with Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet called “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004) to be filmed, almost twenty years later, “The book of solutions”, a narcissistic, hollow, boring childishness? It’s inexplicable.

In between, in addition to leaving Hollywood to return to his native France, there were some failures, but mostly short films, clips and videos. Nothing that may interest the reader who finds himself in front of this feature film that arrives, no less inexplicably, in nine Argentine cinemas, in times where there is so much need to recover the lost viewer (that other viewer who is interested in things other than Godzilla, Marvel and similar things, and to whom things like this will alienate even more).

“The book of solutions” is the portrait of a film director, some say an “alter ego” of Gondry (let’s hope he hasn’t become that), but 30 years younger, hysterical, unbearable, who at the beginning of the film suffers the logical rejection of a board of producers who do not plan to release that unintelligible thing that he presented to them. More or less like what we are seeing as viewers.

So Mark (Pierre Niney), its protagonist, flees with the filmed material and a handful of assistants to a country house where his aunt Denise lives. (Françoise Lebrun) to edit the film at will. He doesn’t know what he wants to do, maybe something like Godard from the 60s but in the years of Artificial Intelligence, or a story similar to “Memento” of Christopher Nolan (before pocketing millions with Batman and the Oscar with “Oppenheimer”), since, as Mark explains to his assistant, it could be a film that starts from the end and ends at the beginning, all based on flashbacks. And regarding “Memento”: Nolan started with female students and ended in glory; Gondry follows the exact opposite path.

There is not much else to note, except that, at one point in the film, when Mark shows a first copy of his film in the countryside, in front of his aunt, assistants and several locals, he films them in their chairs with his homemade camera: almost everyone has fallen asleep. We don’t even want to imagine what will happen in the real theaters where the film is shown.

“The Book of Solutions” does not exceed the forty-five hour duration, however, it recalls that phrase attributed to the conductor David Randolph about Wagner’s “Parsifal”: “It is one of those operas that begins at six in the afternoon and, three hours later, you look at the clock and it is six twenty.”.

Behind the truth

This police officer Miles Joris-Peyrafitte It does not reach the levels of tedium of the film mentioned above, although it does reach the levels of predictability. It is so obvious everything that is going to happen that now, From the first minutes, the viewer feels that they already know everything that will happen, and that watching it is more like a procedure than enjoying a movie.to. They are those typical productions that, decades ago, were described with terms like “to watch on cable on a Saturday afternoon if you don’t have something better to do.”

“Behind the truth” (“The Good Mother”) It could only raise questions in the audience like: “where and how many times have I seen this before? in what series?” It really seems like one of the (mediocre) chapters of “Law and Order.”

But it would be unfair not to say that it has other questions: despite being set in Albany, New York, in 2016, the old cell phones used by the characters only serve to talk on the phone and send text messages, as if everything happened 20 years before. (There is only one exception when they take a photo, without giving further explanation). There is also another anachronism: large-circulation paper newspapers, which nostalgically recall the old newsrooms of yesteryear..

Journalist Marissa works in one of them. (Hilary Swank), whom in the first scene his son Toby (Jack Reynor), who is a police officer, enters the newsroom to tell her that his brother, that is, her other son, Mike, has been murdered. A death no less predictable (for the family in this case) because Mike was involved in drug trafficking and with heavy subjects.

At the funeral, Marissa runs into Paige (Olivia Cooke), Mike’s wife, and despite being at odds, they decide to work together to uncover the crime. There are few clues, except for the viewer who already imagines everything.. The script, however, reserves a final surprise in keeping with all the anachronisms of the film. Once she discovers everything, she writes a long article with the truth of the case. But, after lighting a match, apparently to smoke, does she burn it or not? That is the doubt that the director leaves. The viewer is left with another: didn’t even Word have Marissa in 2016 who writes everything on paper?

“The book of solutions” (“Le libre des solutions”, France, 2023). Dir.: M. Gondry. Int.: Pierre Niney, Blanche Gardin, Françoise Lebrun, Vincent Elbaz.

“Behind the truth” (The Good Mother, USA, 2023). Dir.: Miles Joris-Peyrafitte. Starring: Hilary Swank, Olivia Cooke, Jack Reynor, Dilone.