Projection de Damsel au Festival Sundance - Les premières critiques

Suite aux premières projections du film, il est temps de faire un petit tour d'horizon de ce qu'en disent les premiers chanceux à l'avoir vu ! Les premières réactions des critiques sont plus ou moins mitigées, même si la plupart ont apprécié le film dans son ensemble. En tout cas elles sont toutes positives sur Robert :) !

Attention Spoilers !

Indiewire : Note : B+

Dominant le premier acte du film sans but, Pattinson excelle à projeter la confiance d'un homme incapable de comprendre sa propre bêtise. (Il fait paraître le braqueur de banque maladroit dans "Good Time" pour un génie diabolique). Si le film ne se basait que sur ses singeries, il finirait par devenir insupportable, mais il n'est que le point de départ d'un arc complètement différent." 

Lire l'intégralité de la critique : Ici

The Film Stage :

Les Zellner ont de nombreuses surprises dans leurs manches dans ce western hilarant et excentrique dont il ne faut pas trop en dire. Jouant dans un registre plus ouvertement humoristique que leur dernier film, 'Kumiko, the treasure hunter' il est encore suffisamment discret pour rester fidèle au ton sec et soigneusement orchestré du duo.

[...]

Suite à la meilleure performance de Pattinson dans Good Time, son samuel n'est pas loin d'être l'ancêtre de Connie. C'est aussi un protagoniste désillusionné qui manipule pour atteindre son but ultime, l'acteur joue son personnage comme un ado enjoué et décharné qui a regardé tous les westerns de John Wayne, mais qui n'est pas capable de sortir son pistolet de son étui dans un duel. "Je ne suis pas un pistolero. Je suis juste un homme," dit-il après avoir interprété sa chanson d'amour sincère "Honeybun", en partie pour convaincre Parson Henry de la passion qui anime leur mission de sauvetage. 

Lire l'intégralité de la critique : Ici

The Hollywood Reporter : 

"Some piquant comedy sketch work and an obvious affinity for Westerns are not enough to fill out the nearly two hours of Damsel. This latest film buffery-drenched, odyssey-styled amusement from the Zellner Brothers — David and Nathan — is lovely to look at, playfully goofs around with genre tropes and shows Robert Pattinson in a favorable new light. But the writer-directors are so intent on upending expectations and startling the audience that the effort shows far too much and, in the weak second half, ends up being terribly self-conscious. "

Lire l'intégralité de la critique : Ici

Variety :

The Zellners know just how to use their star cast. Robert Pattinson, with a gold tooth where his right incisor should be, hits the perfect note of drawling flaked-out good cheer as Samuel Alabaster, the stranger in town, who has hired Parson Henry (played by David Zellner) to come back with him to marry Samuel and his beloved financée, Penelope (Mia Wasikowska).

[...]

Pattinson’s performance is clever enough that we have no problem accepting him as the shambling-dude version of a classic good guy, and then, when the film’s plot turns around on him, that same cracker-barrel face suddenly looks like the image of a man who may have a screw loose.

[...]

The movie unfolds with an invisible wink, yet the pace is so stately and deliberate that at moments one is tempted to call it glacial. The rhythm is no accident; the Zellners know just what they’re doing. (They must be major devotees of Jim Jarmusch’s “Dead Man.”) Yet “Damsel,” if I’m going to be honest about it, is droll and touching and amusing and a little boring, all at the same time.

[...]

“Damsel” is a comedy of attitude made with the indulgent touch of an art Western. That’s a refreshingly original thing, though it’s not as blow-you-away cool as the filmmakers seem to think it is.

Lire l'intégralité de la critique : Ici

ScreenDaily :

An amusing doodle of a revisionist Western that slowly accrues unexpected resonance, Damsel finds filmmakers David and Nathan Zellner hitting upon a better balance between the jokey and the poetic than their previous feature, 2014’s Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter. Throwing darts at genre conventions while honouring what is eternally mythic about the milieu, this comedy-drama draws off-kilter performances from Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasikowska that subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) reframe archetypes and consistently set us back on our heels.

[...]

In recent years, Pattinson has enthusiastically worked with auteurs and independent filmmakers in order to push himself creatively. His performance in Damsel isn’t as striking as the ones he delivered in Good Time or Cosmopolis, but he clearly enjoys himself playing a gallant pioneer who may not have the mettle required to thrive in the Old West. Pattinson is very smart playing a not-very-bright guy, never letting the portrayal become one-note.

Lire l'intégralité de la critique : Ici

Vulture :

Few filmmakers earn the adjective “offbeat” as definitively as the Zellner brothers, David and Nathan, whose new Western (premiering at Sundance), Damsel, is a goof on the genre in which no trope is left unmolested and nothing goes the way it’s supposed to. Probably you should clear your head and go in thinking you’re going to see a conventional Old West kidnapping adventure story. Then you’ll be delighted or possibly irritated when it turns out to be a clown show with instances of carnage. I was alternately delighted and irritated, though mostly a very happy camper.

[...]

The cast gets into the high spirits. Since that blockbuster Twilight mess, Pattinson has labored to shed his dreamboat image in favor of cretins and hustlers, and here he gives himself a gray metal front tooth and pitches his voice into the high twerpy zone. He’s most amusing. Even funnier is Wasikowska, playing it completely straight and, at times, terrifyingly violent. She can do no wrong, in my book.

Lire l'intégralité de la critique : Ici

The AVClub (Note : B-)

Who would have guessed, just a few years ago, that Robert Pattinson might become one of our most reliably offbeat, consistently fascinating movie stars? He’s easily the best thing about Damsel (Grade: B-), a quirky, poky, half-comic Western from the sibling filmmakers behind recent Sundance alum Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter. Pattinson plays an eccentric businessman who hires a drunken charlatan preacher (Kumiko’s David Zellner) to travel West with him, and then to help him find and marry his sweetheart (Mia Wasikowska). Unusually structured, Damsel has one great surprise in store for viewers—a turn that feeds right into the film’s inspired subversion of genre tradition. But the film backs itself into a kind of corner, too, repeating the same joke over and over again, because the (admittedly strong) point it’s making is in the repetition. That’s my careful, vague way of saying that Damsel is both on-point and one-note: a curiosity without much going for it beyond its progressive flipping of script. Oh, and Pattinson, too, who seems as at home on the prairie as he did on the mean streets of New York.

Lire l'intégralité de la critique : Ici

New York Post

Last year, former “Twilight” vamp Robert Pattinson proved he was no lightweight with a gritty turn in the indie heist “Good Time.” He’s now pulled a 180 with a hilariously oddball performance in the western comedy “Damsel,” whose title belies the formidable woman (Mia Wasikowska) at its center.

[...]

It takes a bit to get accustomed to the Zellners’ style — but once you do, boy, does “Damsel” really blossom. (It’s also got one of the most original scores I’ve heard, from the band The Octopus Project, whose soundtrack is rather like The Cure by way of Sergio Leone.)

[...]

“Damsel’s” physical comedy, deadpan dialogue and the occasional burst of bloody violence meld into a very modern meditation on relationships in the frontier era. “How,” one hapless character laments, “is anyone supposed to meet anyone out here?”

Lire l'intégralité de la critique : Ici

Et quelques critiques en français :

20 minutes :

Dans Damsel, le western absurde des frères Zellner (sans date de sortie ni trailer), Daisy incarne Butterscotch, un cheval miniature que Robert Pattinson veut offrir à sa fiancée Mia Wasikowska, qu'il rejoint au Far West. Ne vous fiez pas à ce pitch classique: Damsel ressemble plus à un film des frères Cohen qu'à un western de Sergio Leone.

Un western décalé et féministe

«Nous sommes des fans de western mais nous voulions faire exploser les codes du genre», ont expliqué les réalisateurs après la projection. Mission réussie. Sous le vernis des paysages magnifiques de l'Utah, les frères Zellner, qui avaient déjà montré leur potentiel avec Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, plantent une galerie de personnages caricaturaux pour mieux les dynamiter par la suite –au sens propre.

Sans trop en révéler, le personnage incarné par Mia Wasikowska est loin d'être une «demoiselle en détresse». Et il n'y avait plus vraiment de doutes après Cosmopolis et Good Time, Robert Pattinson confirme avec sa performance déjantée qu'il est bien plus que le vampire aux yeux scintillants de Twilight. La bonne surprise de Sundance.

Lire l'intégralité de la critique : Ici

Cinéma teaser :

#Damsel : "on n'a jamais vu #RobertPattinson aussi drôle" nous dit notre envoyée spéciale à #sundance #SundanceFilmFestival #Sundance2018 pic.twitter.com/C5XutcbsII

— cinemateaser (@cinemateaser) 24 janvier 2018

Traduction à venir dans le week end...