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      In Alain Guiraudie’s Films, Sex Leads to Unexpected Destinations

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      Alain Guiraudie broke through with “Stranger by the Lake.” In his new movie, “Misericordia,” eroticism and death are also intimately entangled.Carnal urges drive the characters in the films of the French director Alain Guiraudie toward absurd and sometimes dangerous mishaps. In his sexually audacious narratives, which usually play out in the countryside, the temptation of the flesh is a potent catalyst.“I don’t know if you can say that desire is what drives all of cinema, but it’s certainly what drives my cinema,” Guiraudie said via an interpreter during a recent video interview from his home in Paris.That artistic mandate guides his latest picture, “Misericordia,” which opens in U.S. theaters on Friday. When it came out in France, it received eight nominations for the César Awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscars, and was named the best film of 2024 by the renowned French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma.The movie follows Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) as he returns to the small rural town of his youth, where he soon becomes the prime suspect in a murder, while also awakening the lust of the local Catholic priest.For Guiraudie, 60, eroticism and death are intimately entangled. “There are two situations in which we return to our most primitive instincts: sex and violence,” he said. “I see an obligatory connection.”Félix Kysyl and Jacques Develay in “Misericordia.” Like most of Guiraudie’s movies, it is set in the countryside.Sideshow/Janus FilmsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Ghostlight,’ ‘Watcher’ and More Streaming Gems

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      A pair of carefully crafted character studies and three female-fronted thrillers are among the gems hidden on your subscription streaming services this month.‘Ghostlight’ (2024)Stream it on Hulu.So few films concern the daily lives of the working class, in any meaningful way, that it’s sort of astonishing when one comes along that feels so embedded there. That’s the case with this heart-tugging drama from the directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson (“Saint Frances”), in which a grieving father stumbles into a community theater production of “Romeo and Juliet.” Keith Kupferer is marvelous as the father, beautifully capturing the frustrations and emotional limitations of his class and generation, while Katherine Mallen Kupferer performs modestly as his wife, until a late moment that absolutely clobbers you. And that, in many ways, holds true for the entire movie.‘Goodrich’ (2024)Stream it on Max.“This midlife crisis is no walk in the park, I’ll tell you that,” snorts Andy Goodrich (Michael Keaton) near the end of this poignant comedy-drama, and while his daughter Grace (Mila Kunis) notes the mathematical improbability that 60-something is “midlife,” the sentiment stands. Andy, the owner-operator of a Los Angeles art gallery that’s seen better days, is in free-fall. His wife has just checked herself into rehab, much to his bafflement (he’s so checked out, he never noticed her addiction), leaving him to care for their elementary-school aged twins himself. Keaton is credited as an executive producer, and it’s easy to see why the project was important to him; the writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer hands him a stellar showcase, a guy who talks fast and thinks faster, and whose inherent likability helps soften his obvious flaws. The result is a poignant examination of getting older and wondering if you’ve lost it — whatever your particular “it” may be.‘Saint Maud’ (2021)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gene Winfield, Whose Cars Starred in Film and on TV, Dies at 97

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      He was know for modifying cars with innovative metal work and paint jobs, and for building vehicles like the Galileo shuttle for the original “Star Trek” series.Gene Winfield, a hot rodder and prominent car customizer who built fanciful vehicles for “Star Trek,” “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and other television series and for films like “Blade Runner” and “Sleeper,” died on March 4 in Atascadero, Calif. He was 97.His son, Steve, said he died in an assisted living facility from metastatic melanoma. He had also been diagnosed with kidney failure.Mr. Winfield began to attract national attention in the late 1950s with a two-door 1956 Mercury hard top called the Jade Idol.According to the custom car website Kustorama, he transformed the Mercury for a customer by adding features like handmade fenders rolled in aluminum in the front end; headlight rings made from 1959 Chrysler Imperial Crown hubcaps; a television set integrated into a new dashboard; and a steering column taken from an Edsel.The restored Jade Idol in Salinas, Calif., in 1981. Mr. Winfield first attracted national attention in the late 1950s with the car, a customized two-door 1956 Mercury hardtop.David GrantAutomobile magazine described the Jade Idol as having “a sharklike presence that represented a new direction in customs.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gemma Chan Gets Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ More as She Gets Older

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      The actress, now starring in “The Actor,” talks about Schubert, “In the Mood for Love” and other art, food and pets that she loves.After captivating audiences as the glamorous Astrid in “Crazy Rich Asians,” Gemma Chan was sent quite a few scripts with dignified but unhappy wives.She sensed trouble ahead.“There’s a danger of being typecast,” she said. “But I’m still a work-in-progress pushing back on that. I want to do something different and show something different and tell a different story.”Her new film, “The Actor,” directed by Duke Johnson, checked those boxes. Chan plays Edna, a costume designer in a factory town and the romantic interest of an amnesiac.She had loved Johnson’s haunting animated movie “Anomalisa,” and she responded similarly when she read “The Actor.”“Then I spoke to Duke about how he planned to shoot it, which was in quite a different way to anything that I’ve shot before,” she said. “Quite experimental, bringing elements that were quite theatrical and quite stylized.”Chan has also wrapped “Josephine,” with Channing Tatum, about an 8-year-old who witnesses an assault. And she is producing her own work: an adaptation of the “Rise of the Empress” fantasy book series for Amazon Prime Video, and an unconventional history of Anna May Wong, considered to be the first Chinese American movie star.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Florida Mayor Threatens Cinema Over Israeli-Palestinian Film

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      The mayor of Miami Beach wants to end the lease of a group renting a city-owned property because it is screening the Academy Award-winning “No Other Land” there.The mayor of Miami Beach is seeking to oust a nonprofit art house cinema from a city-owned property for showing “No Other Land,” the Oscar-winning documentary that chronicles the Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes in Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank.The mayor, Steven Meiner, introduced a resolution to revoke the lease under which O Cinema rents the space, he announced in a newsletter this week. He described the film as “a false, one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our city and residents.”Kareem Tabsch, the co-founder of O Cinema, said that the threat of losing its physical location in Miami Beach was “very grave and we take it very seriously.”“At the time, we take very seriously our responsibility as a cultural organization that presents works that are engaging and thought provoking and that foster dialogue,” he said. “And we take very seriously our responsibility to do that without interference of government.”The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which is now co-counsel for the theater, criticized the mayor’s move, as did the makers of the film, which won the Academy Award for best documentary earlier this month but has not been acquired in the United States by a traditional distributor for either a theatrical or streaming release. Distributors in two dozen other countries had picked up the film even before it won the award.Daniel Tilley, the legal director of the Florida branch of the ACLU, said in an interview that “what’s at stake is the government’s ability to use unchecked power to punish those who dare to express views that the government disagrees with.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Young Hearts’ Review: Finding Acceptance

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      In this coming-of-age drama from Belgium, a 14-year-old boy falls in love with his neighbor and questions his sexual identity.There are no bigoted relatives or homophobic bullies in the pleasantly modest coming-of-age film “Young Hearts.” Instead, Elias (Lou Goossens), a 14-year-old boy, wrestles mostly with himself after he falls in love with Alexander (Marius De Saeger), his new neighbor.Shot primarily outdoors, in the Belgian countryside where the two boys ride their bikes and lounge by lakes, this debut drama by Anthony Schatteman presents a familiar conflict: Alex, who is originally from Brussels, isn’t afraid to be openly gay, whereas the provincial Elias treats their romance like a shameful secret.Elias’s friends at school, including his quasi-girlfriend Valerie (Saar Rogiers), think he’s straight, and because his dad, Luk (Geert Van Rampelberg), is a famous crooner of kitschy Flemish love songs, he’s already sensitive about being mocked.The assumptions of Elias’s family members about his sexuality — and the total absence of queer people in his life up to this point — are enough to convince him his feelings for Alex are abnormal. His mother Natalie (Emilie De Roo) and his grandfather Fred (Dirk Van Dijck) are more sensitive listeners than his self-absorbed father, but Elias insists on keeping things bottled up.The film shifts between Elias’s states of blissful surrender and angsty repression, capturing him in emotionally baring close-ups. Naturalistic performances and quiet scenes of summertime idling bring to mind Luca Guadagnino’s drama “Call Me By Your Name,” though “Young Hearts” is a more wholesome, and ultimately more cliché, endeavor. In the end, teenage brooding gives way to a sparkling fairy tale finale that shows that there was nothing for Elias to worry about, after all.Young HeartsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Novocaine’ Review: Sticks and Stones Will Never Hurt Him

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      In this gross-out action spectacle, Jack Quaid plays an unlikely action hero who, because of a genetic disorder, can’t feel any pain.If we’re in a post- “John Wick” era, where action cinema has been revitalized and modernized — more bullets and blood, more choreographed spectacle — the thrills of the genre have strangely edged closer and closer to that earliest of movie pleasures: slapstick. Particularly in the man-on-a-rampage subgenre, as the violence and gore becomes increasingly absurd, these movies begin to echo that old format, where the more creative and outrageous the pain, the more visceral the pleasure.That’s essentially the kind of silly, gross-out fun of “Novocaine,” which taps into this understanding about as overtly as possible. The key is in the invincibility clause — if, like the Three Stooges themselves, our action hero is virtually indestructible, the pain and its wacky payoffs can be endless.Other films have presented unique and often inane spins on this idea (from Jason Statham in “Crank” to Logan Marshall-Green in “Upgrade”), but this film, directed by Robert Olsen and Dan Berk, takes it to its most extreme, via an almost stupidly simple premise: Because of a genetic disorder, our protagonist Nate Caine (Jack Quaid) can’t feel any physical pain. Cue just about as many ways one can try to invoke it.Nate, though, is no willing bionic man, but in fact the opposite. Because he doesn’t have the sensors of pain to notify him if something has gone wrong, he’s led a conversely bubble-boy existence, fearful that at any moment he might unknowingly injure and kill himself. He tennis-balls the corners of desks, doesn’t eat solid foods (God forbid he bites off his own tongue!) and has become a bit of a recluse.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Who by Fire’ Review: Masculinity and Its Discontents

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      Men posture and peacock in the Québecois director Philippe Lesage’s ensemble drama set at an isolated house in a remote forest.One enduring storytelling strategy is to put some characters in a cage and watch them fight it out. There’s a reason so many mysteries, thrillers and horror movies take place in close quarters: Lockdowns have a way of turning people into lab animals. And whatever the cause — nature, nurture or screenwriting contrivance — when characters are stuck together, they often gnaw on one another, whether they’re on a lifeboat, in a hotel or on a private island.The studied drama “Who by Fire” from the Québecois writer-director Philippe Lesage takes place in a Canadian wilderness area that is as swooningly beautiful as it is expediently remote. Set over a blurry few days, the story largely unfolds in and around a waterfront property, a slice of paradise so isolated that visitors arrive by seaplane. There, old friends and new acquaintances connect. They read, listen to music, dance a bit, and laugh and shout over dinners filled with wine and talk. Amid the levity and Lesage’s heavy ideas about men and masculinity, they also enjoy nature and, at times, try to dominate it and one another.Lesage has a terrific eye, and he opens the movie with a grabber: a hypnotic shot of an old, boxy Mercedes alone on a highway in the near distance, a series of droning electronic notes rising and falling on the soundtrack. As the car passes miles of dense, mountainous forest, Lesage keeps the vehicle steadily positioned at the image’s vanishing point, which keeps your gaze similarly pinned. Outwardly, the setup looks familiar (you could be following friends in your own car) yet the absence of extraneous sounds — there’s no wind, no whirring engine — gives the whole thing a dreamy, somewhat eerie timelessness. Whatever the period, some old-fashioned flourishes and the absence of cellphones suggest that this is a memory piece.The car belongs to Albert (Paul Ahmarani), a screenwriter who’s en route to a friend’s house with his adult daughter, Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré), his younger son, Max (Antoine Marchand-Gagnon), and Max’s friend Jeff (Noah Parker). The owner of the remote getaway is Blake (Arieh Worthalter, an effective live wire), a successful director with an Oscar on a shelf and a plane out front. Blake’s baggage proves heavier than his visitors’: He has a dead wife, an unwieldy ego and a fraught past with Albert. When the two old friends meet, it’s all smiles and bear hugs. Before long, though, everyone is aloft in Blake’s plane and headed for some emotional, psychological and spiritual bloodletting.The movie’s opener — including the enigmatic drive, which can’t help but evoke Kubrick’s “The Shining” — announces Lesage’s gift for stirring up tension visually. That talent is evident throughout, notably during three leisurely dinners that anchor the story, each lasting some 10 minutes of screen time. Working with his director of photography, Balthazar Lab, Lesage stages and shoots these meals similarly, with everyone gathered around a long table. Over drinks and much talk, the camera alternately pushes in toward certain characters and pulls out to reveal the group’s dynamic, catching gestures and the circuitry of their gazes. “You know I hate fighting,” Albert tells Blake at one meal, an assertion that’s plainly hollow.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More