New York (AFP)
Diamonds, basketball, Judaism and gambling: it's an explosive cocktail that the Safdie brothers are proposing with "Uncut Gems", a pure New York film that offers comedy star Adam Sandler a counter-part employment.
It was probably only Josh and Benny Safdie to put Adam Sandler, best known for his schoolboy comedies, into a dramatic film, former basketball player Kevin Garnett, singer The Weeknd and Idina Menzel, who had gone down in history for his performance. of Elsa in "The Queen of Snow".
It is the illustration of a cinema of meetings, in which one does not care about the labels, where the star rubs the actor neophyte, spotted in the street.
"Uncut Gems", which is released in US theaters on Friday and will be distributed by Netflix abroad from January, will have taken the Safdie brothers ten years to come.
Meanwhile, they have even made four films, two documentaries and two feature films, including "Good Time", selected at Cannes in 2017.
"Uncut Gems" is built on the character of Howard, inspired by a man for whom their father worked and who fascinated them.
A diamond with a comfortable life, Howard has his hand on a pebble of exceptional rarity, of those that can change a life. But nothing will happen as planned for this man convinced to always be able to get out of everything.
- Physical tension
Adam Sandler gives life to this Howard in perpetual motion, colorful, businessman, practicing Jew, fickle husband, and especially player beyond the excess.
Accustomed to uncompromising comedy ("Buddies Forever", "Big Daddy"), the former "Saturday Night Live" is coming out of his comfort zone, to the point where he first refused the role, then hesitated before boarding.
As in their previous films, the two directors explore the flaws of their characters, the way society looks at them.
The Safdie make a cinema full of physical tension, but not without humor, with the energy that marked the cinema of the 70s and 80s, that of Scorsese, De Palma, or Cassavetes, disheveled, neurotic, verbose.
A sign of filiation, Martin Scorsese is also co-executive producer of the project.
Modern as it is, the film borrows a lot from the atmosphere of that time, music to some visual effects.
Behind the amusement park that sometimes resembles New York today, the two brothers still feel the pulse of a bitter, rough city full of life and excess.
They chose to install their plot in the diamond district of Manhattan, a kind of entrenched village, out of time, they attended for eight years to prepare the film.
"+ Gems + has been our Shepherd Star for the last ten years," said Safdie at a presentation at the Santa Barbara Festival. "Everything we did in the meantime (...) was a detour".
Today, Safdie says he feels "sad" rather than happy to see his film finished. "We have the feeling of having won but also of having lost, because we do not have this stuff to feed anymore." It was kind of a weird diary.
© 2019 AFP