Film: The Lion Sleeps Tonight - Le lion est mort ce soir

Nobuhiro Suwa
2017 France/Japan
103 minutes

Living legend Jean-Pierre Léaud stars in this playfully self-reflexive ghost story, which functions as a consideration of cinema, mortality, and the actor’s own status as an emblem of film history. He plays Jean, an aging movie actor who, as he prepares to shoot a death scene, finds himself visited by the spirit of a dead, long-ago lover (Pauline Etienne). Meanwhile, he has visitors of another kind: a band of children who cast him in the DIY haunted house movie they are making. Director Nobuhiro Suwa channels the spirit of Rivette as he spins a wonderfully loose-limbed tale that delights in the infinite possibilities of filmmaking. Plus: the gratifying sight of Léaud chucking apples at a gaggle of pesky youngsters.