'The whale', the anemic proposal on obesity by Darren Aronofsky

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The last time Darren Aronofsky was seen at the Lido, he did it in a big way.

'

', from 2017, was a film composed in every detail to be hated and, precisely for this reason, which could not do anything but adore.

His risk, his pomposity, his excess and his resentment against all commonplace ended up becoming obscene liturgy, pleasure without prejudice.

His return to directing five years later also boasts size.

But in another way.

is also a film about the back, about everything that we despise, hide or, again, hate.

However, this time everything is more calculated, more dependent on marketing, more, in effect, false.

Pity.

To situate ourselves, the film adapts the work of

in turns with the decline and even suicide of a university professor who, after the death of his lover, decides to let himself go.

The way of punishing himself, his particular penance for having abandoned his own behind passion, is none other than eating, swallowing, ingesting and swallowing until transforming the body into a strange and repulsive one (yes, it repels beyond the rude and very reprehensible fatphobia) tribute to issues such as cholesterol, high blood pressure, saturated fats, junk food, morbidity, sores on the meat, excoriations, halitosis, vomiting, diarrhea... And so on.

That and more is what is breathed in the film.

Again, as he did in

film for which he won the Golden Lion in 2018, the director's strategy is linked to the fate of the leading actor.

If then it was

who, turned into a defeated self, ends up making reality and fiction coincide, now it is Brendan Fraser who recovers himself after oblivion completely apart from the canons of muscle, grace and the selfie On Instagram.

The actor who lived his moment of glory decades ago is now damned obese and the movie is based on that sentence.

The first bars of the film with an image of an online conference with a single screen off (the teacher's), the initial dramatic budget, which is also social and even philosophical, and the desire to confront the viewer with their own myths and learned gestures turn

into, from the outset, an inalienable provocation.

The mechanism is repeated:

hate to adore at last.

However (and the bad news arrives), the film soon gets rid of many of its best ideas, of its repellent and voracious rigor, to become (and it already hurts) a very repeated and even accommodating celebration of good feelings.

It would seem that the self-help disease is rife.

It's already plague.

Soon, Aronofsky abandons his provocative, violent and very fierce gesture to offer a fable about family misunderstanding and self-destruction due to it, not irrelevant, of course, but so extremely civilized that it would seem just the opposite of what was promised.

And then there's Brendan Fraser.

Since the first images of the film were published, more than one has run to celebrate

(few myths so beloved in and around Christian Hollywood).

Fraser once again demonstrates that he was always what he is:

But he does not do it to a greater extent than on other occasions.

It would be said that to a lesser extent.

The obese dimension of his character is not at all his in real life, the one with more flesh than bone.

Thus, by transforming him through digital effects, the only thing he achieves is to reduce the expressiveness of his gestures and transform into parody what, strictly speaking, he wanted and should have been drama.

Tragedy even.

This being the case, what remains is a correct film.

Nothing more.

But the correction in this case almost cancels it out.

Remember, this is a project based solely on your hunger (excuse me) for impropriety.

'

is the latest example of the constant choking in which we live from advertising campaigns, crazy ads, hollow headlines...

The actress Virginie Efira at the presentation of 'Les enfants des autres'.ETTORE FERRARIEFE

Lastly, and completely apart from the noise, it should not be forgotten that the official section also programmed

The director limits herself to telling the story of a woman overwhelmed by the desire to be a mother.

Virginie Efira brings to life the protagonist she sees and sees herself both inside and outside of the relationship she maintains with a separated man and a daughter.

The subtlety, precision and clarity of the new film by the director of '

surprises with the same force that she excites.

The result is what is called a balanced and fair diet.

No obscenities or fats or saturated flours.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

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