Xavier Legrand, a new peak
It’s very difficult to make a first film, especially because no one is waiting for you. Directors say it over and over again: “every film is a miracle“But those who succeed with their first film also say that making a second feature film is just as difficult, because this time everyone is waiting for you.
Especially when the first film had great critical success, covered with prestigious awards and unanimous acclaim. Until the end, Xavier Legrand’s first film, was therefore a miracle among miracles. His second feature film, The successoris there another one?
All you need is a great introduction to answer this question. Yes, being dragged by the camera into a spiral where they follow each other Models with his face closed, dressed in the creations of a star couturier who greets his “lap of honour” and his triumphant parade because a mysterious pain pierces his chest, one immediately perceives that The successor goes ahead with dazzling intensity and mastery.
The spiral of the world of Ellias Barnès today, where female figures are devoured by rapt gazes, this spiral that can never be retraced, line of the slaughterhouse or circle of hell, is the tragic mechanical movement that Xavier Legrand chooses to tell the story of Ellias.
His real name is Sébastien, he left the world of yesterday a long time ago. That of his native Quebec where, upon reaching adulthood, he broke all ties with his father to settle in Paris, the world capital of fashion. An established young designer, he is about to become artistic director of a huge high fashion house, following the death of its founder. This is his first “succession”. But the black clothes Ellias wears are not just a professional code. In fact, the man has a dark look, a mysterious worry gnaws at his heart, another darkness is there.
A masterful thriller
This sign of deep anxiety, whose origin seems to date back to a message received from his father three years ago, this feeling rooted in Ellias’ chest and in that of the spectators, disappears when he learns that his father has just died. Then go to Montreal for sort out this other “succession” and finally move on. Having arrived at the deceased’s home, he began to empty it of furniture at a local association. However, he is missing the key to access the cellar. Postponing the eviction until the next day, he finds a key ring in his father’s car…
The successor it’s a thriller, as it already was Until the end. Like him, it tells a story of male violence. But, unlike him, she reverses his point of view to not put in the foreground those who make them, but rather those who give them – and also suffer them. Ellias Barnès, “successor” to a fashion kingdom, is also “heir” to something else. Something far less glorious and infinitely terrible.
Codes of the thriller that encompasses entirely, The successor pushes all the sliders. There’s suspense and paranoia worthy of Alfred Hitchcock, a disturbing pace that tortures, ferocious humor and fear in the shadowy dramas that David Fincher wouldn’t deny.
The symbols chosen by Xavier Legrand serve this purpose genre cinema. Ellias leaves his commanding and luxurious position in Paris to land in a pavilion in a nondescript suburb of Montreal, like an explorer in an adventure film – particularly with a use of music that divides these two worlds. Despite himself, Ellias finds himself “locked” in the corridors of this pavilion, somewhere between home invasion and the survivalthen evolving the anxiety of the thriller towards the terror of horror.
A great performance from Marc-André Grondin
In the role of Ellias Barnes, Oedipus of the 21st century, Marc-André Grondin did not have an easy task. By turns fashion genius, unworthy son, accomplished man and child who pisses himself, all the complexity of the film is found in the character’s contradictions, rendered by the finesse of the Quebec actor’s acting revealed by CRAZY and celebrated with The first day of the rest of your life. Marc-André Grondin almost plays Alland above all it almost sounds like it Alone. And the more his character advances in the story, the more he isolates himself and wants to disappear.
So it’s often just in front of the phone, computer or iPad. When he interacts with his father’s friends and neighbors, everything is right misunderstanding and misunderstandingin a constant refusal of the connection offered to him. The successor tells of the loss of control of a man involved in a disaster, which inspires neither sympathy nor antipathy and which will move forward in confusion Wrong choices. Remarkable is the actor’s progressively muted but terribly expressive performance, which culminates in the final sequences.
So far, so close
Far from Venice where he had won The Silver Lion Xavier Legrand presented his first film, his second, in San Sebastian. Without Léa Drucker and Denis Ménochet, actors in his short film Before losing everything then its adaptation Until the end, it was therefore to Marc-André Grondin who he entrusted the embodiment of his story. From France we left for Quebec, and from national naturalism we moved on tofun North American. But are we really leaving?
There is an elastic effect, boomerangmasterfully staged by the director: we would like to escape, change its setting and its subject, we return tragically and even more violently. Ellias wanted to abolish his first existence, he was brought back there. He would like to escape his fate and dodge the horror that threatens him, it becomes the accelerator. Starting from his subject as well as from the form he gives it, Xavier Legrand takes this position an endless tragedy. Self The successor it gave the illusion of escaping the lineage of Until the endit is actually part of its perfect continuity.
Deeply, The successor addresses the theme of disappearance and what resists it in a diabolical and delightful way. Are we condemned to be our fathers? Can children escape the concrete and symbolic violence of their parents? As such, so is the film’s conclusion cruel and ambiguous. But above all, the terrible spiral movement that began at the beginning of the film does not stop, as if the complete unraveling of the mystery of the “succession”, in all its horror, had given this spiral a perpetual force that still acts long after the end of the film. last images of this ruthless and heartbreaking thriller.
The successor by Xavier Legrand, in theaters from February 21, 2024. Above is the trailer. Find all our trailers here.
Source: Cine Serie
Ray Ortiz is a journalist at Gossipify, known for his coverage of trending news and current events. He is committed to providing readers with accurate and unbiased reporting, and is respected for his ability to keep readers informed on the latest news and issues.
