Sharp Corner (2025)

Sharp Corner (2025)

A fairly original film with an interesting concept. A family moves into a house that has been difficult to rent or buy.

There is a sex scene in the first seven minutes. Quite exciting, natural and spontaneous, it is however interrupted in a rather brutal but interesting way. And all this sets the tone for what is to come!

A feature film that clearly shows the problems and tensions within a couple, even though everything seemed harmonious at the beginning. Sometimes it doesn’t take much for everything to change, for everything to start falling apart. Even if it doesn’t happen all at once, you can still find yourself on a downward slope that will bog down the overall situation.

It’s not easy to balance your relationship with your family life. Having a child completely changes the dynamic. It means you have to be disciplined all the time and be prepared to be challenged and disobeyed. Every parent wants to do their best, but mums and dads have such different views on parenting that it’s difficult to reconcile them. And fatigue prevents you from thinking clearly and gives free rein to irritations that lead to arguments.

When should you consult your partner? Should you always do so, or not? Should you automatically inform your partner that your child has been enrolled in a music or sports class? Is everything really up for debate? Does a parent have the right to make one or more choices for their child on their own?

Whether or not these questions are answered in a film is not the most important thing. No single work of art or book can provide all the answers! It takes time, experience and different opinions. It also takes introspection, compassion, openness and empathy… but where can we find the energy for all that? Especially if you hate your job and your uncompromising and not very humane boss!

We may do our best, but we never feel like it’s enough. We regularly think we’re doing everything wrong, that whatever we do, it’s always a disaster.

Yes, life is a real struggle for many people. And we quickly feel stuck, lost, trapped. Yet we always have a choice. Are there really so many of us who have made the wrong choices? And if nostalgia takes hold of us, it means that we miss a certain time in our lives and that we were probably happier before! Or maybe it’s just an impression. We don’t often feel happy, but when our lives become toxic and deteriorate, we tell ourselves that things weren’t so bad before. And that’s when we understand the importance of the present moment. If things were better before, it means they will be worse afterwards. So… now isn’t so bad!

Good! I can see that this film is making me philosophical, but all this psychology is interesting too. These characters are so familiar. The middle class will easily recognise themselves in them.

The film also shows what trauma can create. Yes, because if there is trauma, hell can become even more nightmarish. And it can also lead to certain obsessions…

In fact, I’m quite fascinated by stories where someone becomes totally obsessed with something. I’m thinking in particular of The Pledge (2001), which isn’t necessarily excellent, but which also made me think and left a mark on me.

Ben Foster also appears in one of the best films of 2025: Christy! A boxing film that I loved. But I notice that he seems to be typecast in disturbing roles. He’s another actor who isn’t afraid of anything and who you find in unexpected places. He has often played leading roles in all kinds of films. He played a boxer in The Survivor, a doped cyclist who battled cancer in The Program, and an atypical father who lives with his daughter in the forest in Leave No Trace…
In short, he may not be in very well-known films, but he knows what he’s doing and knows how to choose his films.

What a pleasure to see Cobie Smulders in a leading role. It seems quite rare to me. I’m keen to see her series Stumptown, where she becomes a private detective. I discovered this actress in How I Met Your Mother and thought she was excellent… but I didn’t like the series very much and quickly gave up on it. Then I was happy to see her again in quite a few Marvel films, but rarely in major roles.

These two actors play very human roles, in that we see their various facets, from the most pleasant to the most detestable.

There are some fabulous, sometimes improbable dialogues!
Like: “Your son saw someone die?
Oh no! He was already dead… burned alive…”

Who are the truly good people? The road to hell is paved with good intentions, agreed. But can we conclude that bad intentions can lead to heaven? Detestable people often have their reasons, whether they are conscious of them or not.

Why do we do certain things? Does someone who takes up martial arts dream of being attacked so they can test their skills? Is it simply ego? When someone buys a weapon, is it for shooting, for self-defence… or in the hope that someone will be annoying enough to make them want to use it?

I dare to hope that when people take first aid courses in order to get their driving licence, it doesn’t make them fantasise about accidents! Prevention is fine, but being likely to create a disaster in order to put your skills into practice is definitely a sign of mental imbalance. And the film shows how one can sink into madness.

I can understand people who say that nothing happens in this film, that the story is ridiculous and that there is no ending (a kind of ‘All that for this???’). It’s true that here, following the move, there are no psychopaths going to break into the house, there are no hidden spirits or family secrets that come to light. You don’t necessarily need all that to make an intriguing, even captivating story. But it’s a matter of feeling or sensitivity. Not everyone’s problems can touch us without a minimum of open-mindedness.

I saw that it was classified as a Thriller, but also as a Comedy. I’m almost certain that those people haven’t seen Sharp Corner. There’s nothing to laugh about here, except for the absurdity of the situation. I’m sorry to say that I don’t necessarily agree with the last twenty minutes. However, I loved this film for over an hour and twenty minutes. But then something happened that I had hoped would not happen. And even if a film is supposed to surprise us and take us through many different phases, there is still a significant drop in quality in the second half compared to the first. That doesn’t stop the ending from bothering me, though, despite the fact that it ends a bit abruptly.

Final question: To what extent should we fight fire with fire?