"it was bound to happen, right?"

fuelled by bonello's deft and rhythmic compositions/editing, that find structurally and geographically interesting ways to thrill & comment simultaneously as he tracks 7 kids carrying out a paris bombing (there's a repetition of gunfire with constantly shifting visual information in the climax that so simply yet viscerally captures a sense of inevitability that my jaw actually dropped), this is a desperate cry for young people without genuine avenues of expression, political and otherwise, and wholly essential cinema. the extended, uneasy opening that lingers on the mundane, ordinary methodology of the homegrown terrorists is incredibly thrilling but the back half that meditates on the aftermath—contrasting these frustrated, radical kids and their world of hollow, commercial surfaces…

Reactionary nonsense. It can be VERY impressive formally but it's ideas are so simplistic and for all the wrong reasons..it should have been a straight-genre picture, but these kinds of generational/current events films are never trustworthy. Politics for people who don't think about it. Politics for people who don't read books. It's basic premise is a slightly idiotic contradiction: communism + genre, yet genre only exists because of the marketplace..

Still - maybe I'm being a bit too harsh: the film comes alive in the backhalf, but only because the emphasis on empty reflections is mirrored by the shopping mall setting. But this is only a success on an aesthetic level: stripped from its "current events" plot, the film is…

"It's weird doing nothing." Captures both the staggering sense of potential and the simultaneous, paradoxical tunnel vision of modern engagement with reality. It's a film very much "of the now," not in some lame zeitgeist-y manner, but in the way it captures a specific outlook, a way of seeing. Call-backs to Dawn of the Dead and Night of the Comet aren't trite commentaries on consumerism or radicalism or whatnot, but more ambitious abstractions of an inescapable, atomized mode of experience. It's how the notion of the progressive "now" - note the alternate title: Paris est en Fête - has become warped because of individualized context. ("She was only ten when she sang this. Seen the video? It's totally sick," says…

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Took me longer than I care to admit to decipher NOCTURAMA's true intentions, only aided by knowing next to nothing about it beforehand other than "terrorism." Anyone who's seen it, though, should be able to ascertain that "terrorism" is not the point -- and to a large degree, neither is realism -- despite a thrillingly wordless opening sequence that might hint otherwise, calling to mind both THERE WILL BLOOD and RIFIFI with its marvelous, silent tension. The film gets less and less pragmatic and very nearly approaches downright absurdist territory (or, at the very least, a complete absence of logic), and what started as a gripping -- if completely mystifying -- execution of best-laid plans becomes a Cubism-level appraisal…

Dawn of the Dead, very obviously, but with the zombies - who spend the first half walking, walking, walking down the streets and subways of Paris; they really are the walking dead - now on the inside, trying on the lineaments of capitalism without seeming to worry overmuch about betraying their ideals (because they don't have any?). "It was bound to happen," says a girl on the street, 'it' being domestic terrorism - a college intellectual puts it more floridly: "Civilisation is a condition for the downfall of civilisation" - which could also be taken to imply that it hasn't happened yet, i.e. that the film isn't about the extremist terrorism we're seeing now but a possible next stage, when…

If you think Nocturama is empty and hollow, then I think you're empty and hollow.

Much like one of Bonello's acknowledge influences on this film, Bresson's The Devil Probably, Nocturama is a film you have to wrestle with. He deliberately resists psychologizing in a conventional sense which makes for an alienating experience for much of the run-time. I respect this - in real life I don't tend to know the inner psychology of people based on the majority of their actions. Nocturama reflects this and therefore rejects the big lie of cinema. The characters start out being almost totally blank as we observe the preparations and execution of The Act - a series of bombings around Paris with minimal casualties.…

Ok, está começando um novo Festival de Cannes e a essa altura do fim do mundo eu acho que a gente podia já abolir de vez as diferenças entre cinema “de arte” e o cinema que de fato chega às pessoas no dia a dia. Bertrand Bonello é o típico autor francês que começou num registro muito hermético e os filmes dele foram se abrindo depois de L’Apollonide, e calhou que ele fez cinco anos depois este Nocturama, que está disponível na Netflix e é um filme típico da plataforma, no sentido de engajar a adolescência sem menosprezar sua inteligência e de aproveitar as liberdades do streaming para inclusive desafiar os limites do que entendemos ser o espaço dos jovens…