Le Film de Mon Père review – father’s videotape legacy sparks intergenerational dialogue

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A Swiss film-maker’s parent leaves behind a visual diary that raises questions about the limitations of art in a fascinating documentary debut The genesis of Jules Guarneri’s documentary – his first – comes from an unusual gift. Having made more than 20 hours of a filmed diary, his father, Jean, entrusted the material to the budding director, hoping that it would form the building blocks for his son’s first feature. These visual journals, in which the older man addresses the camera – and ultimately Guarneri – with recollections from his past, are awash with nostalgia and regret. As Jean’s recordings are interspersed with Guarneri’s own footage of his family, what starts out as a monologue gradually transforms into an intergenerational dialogue between father and son. Filmed with a fixed camera, Jean’s diaries have a static quality that echoes the stagnancy of his life story. Christabel, his wife and Guarneri’s mother, was an heiress, and the couple lived as idle rich in the Swiss vil...
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‘Truly unwatchable’: writers on their toughest scenes of movie violence

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For the return of the gory Saw franchise, Guardian writers remember the hardest scenes of big screen violence they’ve had to endure

A rape-revenge thriller told in reverse, Gaspar Noé’s infamous provocation opens with the revenge part first, as two men (Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel) embark on a frantic search for the monster who sexually assaulted and mutilated the woman (Monica Bellucci) at the center of their lives. As they descend into a BDSM club called The Rectum, Noé levels his own kind of assault on the audience, with the camera swirling relentlessly down this chaotic inferno and the soundtrack enforcing a feeling of deep disorientation, like a carnival ride due for decommission. When one of the men finally identifies their target – falsely, as it happens – he pulverizes his face with a fire extinguisher, the camera following every swing. Irréversible will later stage the rape through one long, pitilessly static take, but this sequence is a blow to the solar plexus, and we never fully recover from it. Scott Tobias

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