Two films not to be missed: “Is that the last line?” and “Los Domingos”

AND THE LAST BIT?
Type: Comedy ✦✦✦
Direction: by Bradley Cooper, With Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Andra Day, Bradley Cooper

In his third film about the fate of a couple, the actor and director of A Staris Born And Mastercarves out a secondary role (the protagonist’s best friend, cheeky and in crisis) and leaves a Will Arnett, also co-writer, takes center stage. Which is that of a well-known club in Manhattan where daring newcomers perform stand-up numbers.

Alex, fresh from a consensual separation from Tess (Laura Dern, always a joy to behold)finds in the complicit gaze of the audience of strangers (impossible to compare with that of friends and children) and in the theatricalization of the epilogue (including sexuality), the key to catharsis and an antidote to pain. Inspired by the true story of John Bishop, a former British footballer who became a stand-up comedian during his divorce, Is This Thing On? (the original title, “Does this thing work?” refers to the microphone, the instrument through which a private crisis is made public) is a melancholy soliloquy and a contemporary remarriage comedy.

LOS DOMINGOS
Type: Drama ✦✦✦
Direction: yes Alauda Ruiz De AzúA, With Blanca Soroa, Miguel GarcéS, Nagore Aranburu

The Sundays of the title are those that the family of seventeen-year-old Ainara goes to the most traditional of ways, mass and then lunch at her grandmother’s. A balance with crumbly foundations: when the young girl reveals that she wants to enter a convent, both her authoritarian and greedy father and her cultured and liberal aunt lose their aplomb.

A miracle maintaining the tension from start to finish in this one austere and highly awarded film (5 Goyas and 5 statuettes at the San Sebastián festival) with a similar premise. But the 48-year-old Basque director knows how to talk about the relationships and the infinite forms that “discernment” (the name given to spiritual research into the authenticity of a vocation) can take.