The Mother of All Lies review – pursuing the truth of Morocco’s brutal dictatorship years

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Asmae El Moudir employs a delicate mix of handmade replicas and oral testimony to brilliantly evoke personal and collective trauma Between those who refuse to remember and those who struggle to forget, a tumultuous clash of minds occupies the centre of Asmae El Moudir’s inventive documentary, a prize-winner at last year’s Cannes film festival. Through a constellation of clay figurines and dollhouse-style miniature sets, most of which were constructed by El Moudir’s father, the director recreates her oppressive childhood in the Sebata district of Casablanca. Under the watchful eyes of her domineering grandmother Zahra, all personal photos are banished from the house, save for a picture of King Hassan II. The delicate mix of handmade replicas and oral testimony brilliantly evokes the personal and collective trauma that stem from Morocco’s “Years of Lead” – a period of state brutality under Hassan II’s dictatorial rule. Lingering on the nimble fingers of El Moudir’s father as he puts t
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The Second Act review – Quentin Dupieux’s likable meta comedy of actors’ private lives

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Cannes film festival
With help from an A-list cast, Dupieux brings his customary mischief to an amiable tale of imposture and role play

Cannes can always do worse than choose a comedy for its opening gala, and the festival is off to an amiable, entertaining start. Quentin Dupieux brings the wackiness onstream with this cheerfully mischievous, unrepentantly facetious fourth-wall-badgering sketch. It’s a sprightly meta gag, a movie about a movie, or perhaps a movie about a movie about a movie – or perhaps just a movie, full stop, whose point is to claim that reality as we experience it inside and outside the cinema is unitary despite the levels of imposture and role-play we bring to it. It is all just one unbroken skein of experience like the endless dolly-track (the temporary rail that lets the camera move smoothly) that Dupieux finally shows us.

There are plenty of laugh lines, though The Second Act would be a bit thin were it not for the rich, creamy thickness of the alpha-grade French acting talent involved. We see a nervy, unhappy guy called Stéphane (Manuel Guillot) open up his restaurant in the middle of nowhere, quibblingly called The Second Act. Two young men are seen walking towards the restaurant: David (Louis Garrel) and his pal Willy (Raphaël Quenard, from Dupieux’s previous film Yannick). David has a date there with a beautiful woman, whose clinginess and neediness he nonetheless finds a turnoff, so he’s brought Willy along to seduce her and take her off his hands. This woman, Florence (Léa Seydoux) is preparing to meet David, unaware of his plans to palm her off on someone else, and so confident is she that David is the One that she has actually brought her dad with her, Guillaume, played by Vincent Lindon.

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