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Something in the air movie4/27/2023 ![]() After a security guard is seriously injured by a Molotov cocktail thrown by one of the protesters, however, Gilles and his new girlfriend Christine (Lola Creton) leave the country for Italy. They distribute leaflets, contribute articles to left-wing magazines, and spray paint graffiti slogans on the walls. Gilles and his friends Alain (Felix Armand) and Jean-Pierre (Hugo Conzelmann) are activists in the political arena, working to create a better society. ![]() Events are shown from the perspective of Gilles (Clément Métayer), a 17-year-old high school student who is a prospective filmmaker, painter of considerable talent as well as a political activist. Something in the Air is about coming-of-age and the awakening of conscience, and Assayas has the courage to remind us of the need to align our actions in life with our beliefs and conscience. ![]() Deshaves loses an eye after being hit in the face by a smoke grenade, and the poster of his bloody head is shown as a symbol of resistance throughout the film. A demonstration is held at the Place de Clichy in Paris as a teacher in a high school class reads a passage from Pascal, “Between us and Heaven or Hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.” At the same time, the brutal police repression of a young protester, Richard Deshayes, takes place in nearby streets demonstrating the immediacy of Pascal’s words. The impact of the 1968 near revolution is still being felt three years later in February, 1971 when Olivier Assayas’ semi-autobiographical Something in the Air (French title, Après mai) opens. By the end of July, the government of the autocratic Charles de Gaulle was teetering on the brink of collapse. The objectives were self-management by workers, a decentralization of economic and political power and participatory democracy in the factories and universities. By July, workers had shut down Paris with a general strike in which ten million workers took part, occupying factories and marching in solidarity with students, who occupied the Sorbonne. In March of that year, a single spark began a revolt when a small group of students at Nanterre University took to the streets to protest conditions at the University. Even if the role is a little one-note, Davis is superb: in basketball parlance, her performance is all swish.In 1968 in Paris, France, the something in the air was revolution. ![]() Deloris, on the other hand, emerges as a tower of strength and empathy, the Jordan of the movie that you’ll come away thinking about. The by-product of this is that Jordan becomes a strangely inconsequential presence in a film that’s all about him a man who leaves his mother to do his talking, and who seems to have little agency of his own. Presumably in deference to the basketball legend, Affleck makes him an oddly invisible figure in the drama - Jordan (Damian Delano Young) gets just one word to say, and when he’s present, the film shoots and cuts around him (it’s unintentionally hilarious when, in one crucial boardroom scene, he hastily turns his head away to study something on a wall before you can catch a proper glimpse). But Air has a bit of a Michael Jordan problem. It's a crowd-pleaser, powered by kicky dialogue, tossed out at speed by its players. Around them is a crackerjack ensemble: Jason Bateman as a sceptical exec, Chris Tucker (in his first film role for seven years) as a fast-talking marketing wonk, and especially Viola Davis as Michael Jordan’s mother Deloris, whom Vaccaro needs to woo if he’s going to fulfil his hoop dream and make the deal of a lifetime. Knight’s love of jogging is not shared by Damon’s exec Sonny Vaccaro, the movie’s main character, a doughy sharpshooter who does his best brainstorming while watching two TVs at the same time. It's a crowd-pleaser, powered by kicky dialogue – but Air has a bit of a Michael Jordan problem.
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