Comedy wretched searching all across contemporary America, The Sweet East neither his spectator nor his zygomatics. A big favourite presented at the GIFF (Geneva International Film Festival)…
From chief op' to director
Sean Price Williams made some shorts, then worked with Jean-Manuel Fernandez to the establishment of Eyes Find Eyes. But he mainly served as director of photography, to his defending body since it is absolutely not what he aspired to at the base. Working in particular on the projects of the Safdie brothers (for example Good Time) or Abel Ferrara, he multiplied his collaborations through very heterogeneous cinemas. With The Sweet East, he takes for the first time alone the film director cap...
Turned in 16 mm, the project was born from a four-hand writing between Sean Price Williams and the famous American critic Nick Pinkerton (Film How, Sight & Sound...). If both have a common point of having worked in the incredible video-store Kim Kims video By Ashley Sabin and David Redmon, their collaboration revolves around the common taste for sharp feathers. The one that splits. And we will have a nice demonstration in The Sweet East…
Alice in Timbré Country
Indeed, through the "soft East Coast" of the title, we are about to follow Lilian's rock trip (the brilliant and absolutely magnetic Talia Ryder) escaping from a boring class trip to Washington to get on the road to the U.S. terroir. Playing this sexualized and unbelieving Alice, Lilian throws herself through a Wonderland that smells like dust. Between anarchist anarchist punks a moron, neo-Nazi old boy and sexually frustrated Islamists, she goes from an incongruous situation to an incongruous situation, using her lascif air and her imparable false naivety to navigate through this sick society.
« Nick Pinkerton and I felt we had to make a film that we would enjoy watching »
Actress in particular Simon Rex (Red Rocket, Scary Movie...) in neo-Nazi troubled by its beauty or even Jacob Elordi (Euphoria) interpreting an actor a little too sure of his charisma, but it is nevertheless she who carries and radiates to each of the plans of The Sweet East. And what strikes at viewing is how much the film affords itself. An absolute freedom, which wraps Sean Price Williams' feature film with a salutary unpredictability. Each plan contains a surprise, every break in tone surprises, every script turn flies, so that it becomes impossible for the spectator to know where poor Lilian is heading, or what sudden script turn will fall on her.
If it takes a few minutes to get used to the 16 mm grain and to an unstable filming and often in a sometimes confusing close-up, Lilian's abracadabrantesque story will have no trouble grasping his spectator at the throat to release him, drunk of what he has just seen, after forty-five hours of the feature film. A big, crazy and acid heartbeat of this 2023 edition of the GIFF, and without a doubt the birth of a career for the incredible Talia Ryder!
Definitely, there are nice things at the GIFF pardi!
It looks like yes! 😉
Ouiii de très belles surprises ! J’ai pas encore eu le choc comparable à la présentation de Pacifiction l’année passée, mais le festiv n’est pas encore fini ^^
[…] et au péril de leur vie. Dans un autre registre, on lui préférera largement l’excellent The Sweet East qui singeait bien mieux une Amérique privée de repères et qui n’a jamais su se libérer du […]
C’est ajouté à ma liste de films à voir, merci!