Canadian Film Review: The Bay Boy (1984)

* * 1/2
Director: Daniel Petrie
Starring: Keifer Sutherland, Liv Ullmann

An unremarkable film save for the fact that it won the Genie for Best Picture in 1984 and features a young Kiefer Sutherland in his first big screen role, The Bay Boy is the sort of gentle coming-of-age period drama that seems to be a feature of just about every era of filmmaking. There's nothing truly bad about it but, at the same time, there's nothing all that compelling about either, at least not so far removed from the cultural context of its release. It's a decent enough picture, it just hasn't aged as well as it might have.

Canadian Film Review: Incendies (2010)

* * * *
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette

Denis Villeneuve’s brilliant Incendies is the kind of film that you just can’t stop thinking about after you see it. It burrows into your head and haunts you so that you find your mind returning to it again and again. I think this is the kind of movie that it’s best to go into knowing as little about the plot as possible, so if you haven’t seen it yet and plan to, I recommend waiting to read this review because I’m going to touch on some major spoilers. I honestly can’t stress this enough: go into the movie cold; it will be a much more fulfilling experience that way.

Canadian Film Review: Lilies (1996)

* * * 1/2
Director: John Greyson
Starring: Matthew Ferguson, Danny Gilmore, Jason Cadieux, Aubert Pallascio, Marcel Sabourin

The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
- Hamlet

Like Hamlet, John Greyson's film Lilies centers on a man determined to avenge a wrongful death, who uses a play to draw out the confession of the man responsible. Adapted from Michel Marc Bouchard's play Les Feluettes and set in a Quebec prison, this tale of love, jealousy, and revenge makes for an utterly engrossing and engaging film.

The story begins in 1952 when Bishop Bilodeau (Marcel Sabourin) is asked to visit a prisoner to hear a special confession. The prisoner is Simon Doucet (Aubert Pallascio), who grew up with Bilodeau in the same small town. Almost as soon as he arrives, Bilodeau realizes that all is not as it appears and that he has been lured to the prison under false pretences. The confession is not meant to be Doucet's but his own and it will be elicited through a play Doucet has written which will be performed by the other prisoners.

The play is set in 1912 and involves the relationship between Doucet (played in the play by Matthew Ferguson) and a young man named Vallier (Danny Gilmore). Young Bilodeau (Jason Cadieux) is jealous of their relationship because he wants Doucet, whom he regards as a saint, for himself but the bond between Doucet and Vallier is too strong to be broken. Except, perhaps, by Doucet's father and his own internalized homophobia. After meeting Lydie-Anne (Alexander Chapman), a French Baroness, Doucet attempts to lead a "normal" life by courting her and becoming engaged. His love for Vallier remains strong, however, and eventually he's forced to admit that he can't live a lie and he and Vallier make plans to run away together. But before they can get away tragedy strikes and events unfold in such a way that it leads to Doucet's imprisonment.

All of the roles in the film are played by men, which can seem jarring at first but quickly comes to feel natural with the way that the story unfolds. It also adds new dimension to one of the story's primary themes, which is the idea of gender/sexuality as performance. Doucet thinks he can play against his nature, an impossibility which is only highlighted by the fact of Chapman playing Lydie-Anne and also by the way that the characters relate to each other. Doucet is trying to play the role of the traditional heterosexual male but he's chosen a partner who is on a higher social and economic plane, facts which ultimately subvert a traditional male-female power dynamic. Add in the fact that Lydie-Anne is the sexual aggressor and it becomes increasingly clear that Doucet occupies a submissive role in the relationship, further undermining the idea that when he's with Lydie-Anne he's fulfilling society's idea of what real masculinity is.

In terms of the staging of the play within the film, Greyson moves easily back and forth between a straight up, stripped down stage version on the prison floor and scenes shot in realistic settings with elaborate sets and costumes. Again, this can be a bit jarring at first but Greyson handles the shifts in such a masterful way that by the end you don't even really notice, it just becomes a part of the ebb and flow of the story.

Lilies would go on to win 4 of the 14 Genies for which it was nominated, including Best Picture. Greyson was nominated for Best Director and Ferguson, Gilmore and Cadieux all received Best Actor nominations while Chapman was singled out for a Supporting Actor nod. Had it been up to me, Brent Carver also would have received a Supporting nomination for his performance as Vallier's mentally unstable (but intensely supportive) mother, the Countess de Tilly. While all the actors are excellent, it was Carver's performance which resonated the most for me.

Canadian Film Review: The Changeling (1980)

* * *
Director: Peter Medak
Starring: George C. Scott, Melvyn Douglas

Word of advice: if you're living in a house where all the fawcetts start running on their own, the piano can play itself, and a creepy old lady tells you that the house "doesn't want people," just leave. Just pack a bag and go. Don't become determined to get to the bottom of it and definitely do not break open the secret locked room. No good will come of it.

The Changeling starts as high melodrama (to wit: the hero stands on one side of a highway using the telephone booth, watching his wife and daughter play in the snow on the other side; cut to a shot of a semi barrelling down the road in one direction; cut to a car coming from the other direction starting to skid; cut to the hero, realizing what's about to happen but getting stuck in the phone booth; the wife and daughter clutch each other and scream; the semi sounds its horn... you get the idea) but quickly settles into a first rate ghost story. In it, George C. Scott plays John Russell, a composer who packs up and moves to Seattle following the death of his wife and daughter, and rents a cavernous mansion through the historical preservation society. Why does one man need all this room? Because big houses are scarier than little ones.

Strange things begin happening and when he starts asking questions, he gets the feeling that something is being covered up. He finds a hidden pad-locked door and breaks it open, giving him access to the attic which it appears was once a bedroom. There's a music box in there and when he opens it he finds that it plays the exact same melody that he himself just composed the other day. He brings in experts in the field to conduct a seance and listening to the recording of the event afterwards, hears the ghostly voice answering the medium's questions. Putting all the pieces together he discovers a horrific crime that leads back to the powerful Senator Joe Carmichael (Melvyn Douglas), whose family once owned the house. Carmichael thinks he's being blackmailed, leading Russell to wonder just how much the Senator knows and just how far he's willing to go to cover it up.

The Changeling is cleverly and tightly constructed (though it must be said that the title kind of gives away a major plot twist) film that succeeds at creating a really creepy atmosphere and some genuine scares. The sight of a woman being chased through a house by an empty, old timey wheelchair should probably seem cheesy, but the film is so well made that it's actually pretty terrifying. This isn't a blood and guts kind of horror movie (though there's a little blood) or even one where something is always jumping out from behind corners. Director Peter Medak creates such an intensenly ominous mood that you're on edge even when nothing is happening.

If the film has a flaw it's in the way that Russell relates to the events happening around him. As played by Scott, he's a very commanding character and as such, whether he's being confronted by the ghostly happenings in the house or by the flesh and blood human beings who want to keep him quiet, he never acts as if he believes he's in any danger. This element of the character, while perfectly believable from the guy who played George Patton, nevertheless has the effect of undercutting the overall mood of the film. Part of the reason why scary movies are scary is because we're put in a position to relate to the protagonist and when they're scared, we're scared. If the protagonist isn't scared and acts like there's nothing to be afraid of, it works to remove us from the experience of what's happening on screen and reminds us that it's all just make believe. It's not that Scott's performance isn't good, because it is, it's just that it kind of works against everything else the film is trying to do.

Canadian Film Review: Ticket to Heaven (1981)

* * * 1/2
Director: Ralph L. Thomas
Starring: Nick Mancuso

Ralph L. Thomas’ Ticket To Heaven is an intimate portrait of the closed and intense inner world of a cult, and the vulnerable young man who gets sucked into it. It is a film that is far from perfect, but it’s simple, no-frills style of storytelling is effective and engaging. Though parts of it feel a little dated now, overall its story is easy to slip into and is powerfully told.

The story begins with David (Nick Mancuso), a young man at a crossroads. He loves his girlfriend but, as his best friend Larry (Saul Rubinek) points out, he’s only really crazy about her when she’s about to leave him due to his infidelities. Lonely and directionless, he decides to visit a friend in California who in turn introduces David to some of his new “friends.” They talk him into joining them in what they insist will be a short trip to a camp in the countryside, where soon their intense religious rhetoric has completely overtaken him. What is most interesting about this film is that David isn’t a weak-minded person who is easily manipulated. He recognizes the cult for what it is – though he’s too polite to call it what it is – but finds himself succumbing to it anyway. Part of this is due to sleep and food deprivation, but part of it is his desperate need for human connection, which he gets in spades from his fellow cult members even as they isolate him from the world outside of their farm.

The first half of the story, give or take, focuses on David falling in with the cult and making a couple of small and ultimately futile attempts to break free. The second half deals with his family’s realization of what he’s gotten himself into and their efforts to break him free. Larry infiltrates the cult – almost getting sucked into it himself in the process – and with help from David’s family and friends, get him away from the group so that he can be “deprogrammed.” The deprogramming scenes are brutal in their own way and in certain respects more brutal than the indoctrination scenes, calling into question whether David will be able to come out the other side in one piece. His journey from individual to brainwashed follower back to individual is not an easy one, in part because the idea of giving up agency, sacrificing all that made him himself but also those things that caused him so much distress, is so appealing to him.

The story is told in simple, effective terms and manages to find the right tone for every scene. Objectively, it’s difficult to understand how a reasonable person could get sucked in by people who seem upbeat and happy to an extreme that verges on being disingenuous. However, the film gets close enough that you can begin to understand how a person could be swept up in the communal fervour in even a short period of time. The intimate construction of the story is crucial to its success, but so is the film’s ability to take a step back from the action. The story does not unfold with a heavy hand, but with a lightness of touch that allows the action to move forward without it seeming that the action is being moved forward by outside forces. It’s a delicate balance that Thomas seems to achieve with ease.

The standout performance in the film comes courtesy of Mancuso, who gets to explore various levels of David’s psyche. In Mancuso’s hands David is a character both strong and fragile at the same time, a man who desperately needs to belong and will do anything, fight anyone – including the part of himself that knows the group is a negative force – to retain that sense of place. It’s a performance rich in nuance and detail and the film is more than worthy of it.

Canadian Film Review: Dead Ringers (1988)

* * *
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Jeremy Irons

To put it bluntly, Dead Ringers is a creepy movie. It's really creepy if you're a woman and I would imagine that it's pretty creepy if you're a twin. It's a film about twins who have a parasitic relationship, sharing everything and becoming unable to be fully functional human beings on their own. Jeremy Irons plays the twins and in doing so creates one of his most memorable performances (well, two, I suppose).

Dead Ringers centres on twin brothers, Elliot and Beverly Mantle. Both are celebrated gynaecologists and they share the same medical practice, the same apartment and, often, the same women. They are two separate people with two separate personalities – Beverly is the sensitive one who toils in the background while Elliot is the dominant one described at one point as “Dracula” – but they live as if they are one entity, two halves of a whole person. Their already complicated relationship is thrown into chaos when they get involved with Claire Niveau (Genevieve Bujold), an actress with whom Bev falls in love, or at least into deep dependence.

The twins’ relationship becomes strained as Claire usurps Elliot’s place as the most important person in Bev’s life and also shares her drug addiction with him. Soon Bev’s addiction has taken over his life, completely hindering his ability to work and function. At first Elliot tries to wean him off the drugs but, given how psychically entwined they are, it’s only a matter of time before Elliot has picked up the habit as well. The two spiral out of control together and in a drug fuelled haze take action to separate themselves from each other once and for all.

The film is, obviously, deeply psychological, particularly where the character of Beverly is concerned. He is obsessed with women, with the interior makeup of women, and with female gender roles. At one point Claire innocently remarks that Beverly is an unusual name for a man and he freaks out, asking her if she thinks he’s gay or that his mother wanted girls. His use of plural “girls” is interesting because there’s no indication that Elliot shares the same anxieties with him. The way that Elliot relates to women is messed up, certainly, but he doesn’t seem to suffer from feelings of emasculation the way that Bev does. His attraction to Claire stems, at least in part, from his fascination with the anomalies he discovers while examining her. She has a trifurcate cervix, making her a “mutant” – a woman unlike other women, just as he’s a man unlike other men.

In its exploration of the twins’ profession, the film gets surprisingly clinical, although as it nears the end it becomes increasingly fantastical. Aside from being respected practitioners, the twins are also renowned researchers who have developed a number of medical tools. Some of Bev’s latest inventions, however, leave other doctors and nurses bewildered and, indeed, they look more like fetishistic torture devices than professional instruments. These tools are made specifically for “mutants” and one will later be employed on Eliot. Director David Cronenberg, who is also credited as one of the film's writers, allows a lot of room to explore the psychosexual aspects of the story without ever allowing the film to become overwhelmed with theory. The psychology of the story seems to fit in naturally with everything else, making for a film that doesn’t seem overly self-conscious in its subtext. It’s definitely a very interesting film and the dual performances by Irons are masterful, as he creates very distinct characters out of these two men who are superficially indistinguishable. It’s a great set of performances that would be more than enough to recommend the film even without the technical skill displayed by Cronenberg.

Canadian Film Review: Le Confessional (1995)

* * * *
Director: Robert Lepage
Starring: Lothaire Bluteau

"That's not a suspense story, it's a Greek tragedy!" proclaims Alfred Hitchcock towards the end of Le Confessional. While the character Hitchcock's declaration suggests that the two forms are mutually exclusive, Robert Lepage proves that they're not, managing to create a film that is both a successful suspense/mystery story and a saga of human suffering and torment. Narratively and visually, it's a totally engaging and engrossing film.

The story takes place in Quebec City during two time periods: one half takes place in 1952 when Alfred Hitchcock (Ron Burrage) comes to town to film I Confess and the Lamontagne family struggles to cope with the social stigma of Mrs. Lamontagne’s unwed and pregnant 16-year-old sister, Rachel (Suzanne Clement). The other half takes place some 40 years later, after the death of Mr. Lamontagne brings his son, Pierre (Lothaire Bluteau) back from China. Pierre’s primary concern is in tracking down his adopted brother, Marc (Patrick Goyette), Rachel’s son who was raised by her sister and brother-in-law following her death. Time has not been kind to Marc, a former swimmer now reduced to hustling to make ends meet, spiraling in self-loathing and drug addiction. In an effort to help him, Pierre begins looking into the circumstances of Marc’s birth, hoping to find out once and for all who Marc’s father was, a search which ends less in clarity than in tragedy.

Written and directed by Robert Lepage, the film weaves itself easily between the two time periods and in and out of the film within the film. Portions ofI Confess are filmed inside the church where Rachel worked until the discovery of her pregnancy, and Hitchcock’s plot mirrors Rachel’s story. In Hitchcock’s film, a priest is accused of a crime and unable to reveal the identity of the actual culprit because it was revealed to him inside the confessional. In Le Confessional, a young priest (Normand Daneau) is expelled from the church because everyone assumes that he’s the one who impregnated Rachel, having spent so much time with her when she worked at the church. She confesses to him the actual identity of the father, which of course he can’t reveal. He begs her to clear his name but she can’t because, to her, the truth is much worse than the assumption and leads to her eventual suicide.

Le Confessional, aside from being simply a very good film, is astonishingly good for being a directorial debut. Lepage guides the story with a firm hand, uncoiling the mystery of Marc’s paternity slowly while also giving the characters time and space to develop. He also does some very interesting things visually. There are, quite naturally, a number of shots which echo some of the more famous shots from Hitchcock and manage to be fitting homage rather than cheap theft, but these are only a small part of the technical grace demonstrated within the film. There is a great overhead tracking shot that follows Pierre as he searches for Marc in a bathhouse, making the interior of the building look like a maze. There is a room in the Lamontagne house that Pierre has to keep repainting because the outlines of photos which used to hang there keep bleeding through (the past always coming back to haunt). The symmetry of images and the color red are motifs which show up time and again to good effect. It’s a very thoughtfully crafted film on both the narrative and visual levels.

Lothaire Bluteau is the standout of the cast, an actor who manages to appear simultaneously fragile and strong. This is true not only of his performance here, but also of other performances of his that I’ve seen, particularly in Jesus of Montreal. He’s always very soft-spoken, but he manages to convey a lot with that barely-above-a-whisper voice of his. As the “bad” brother, Patrick Goyette is also very good and makes Marc the inverse of Pierre, a character who looks physically solid, but is mentally and emotionally as fragile as an egg shell. Marc’s fate is inevitable, foreshadowed in the opening scenes, but nevertheless tragic and while he isn’t necessarily a “good” man (as his interactions with his ex-girlfriend and their son demonstrate), you still feel for him.

Upon its release a decade or so ago, Le Confessional was pretty widely celebrated within the Canadian film community, receiving several Genie nominations and walking away with the prize for Art Direction, Director and Picture. It’s a film worth revisiting and has held up pretty well, though some of the music choices date it and, in fact, make it seem older than it is (I’m looking at you Depeche Mode). It should be noted, however, that if your curiosity about the film stems from the inclusion Kristin Scott Thomas in the cast, that her role as Hitchcock’s assistant is actually fairly small and quite disproportionate to her prominence on the DVD cover, which I assume is attributable to the film having been released for home viewing at about the same time that The English Patient was making its theatrical splash.

Canadian Film Review: Jesus of Montreal (1989)

* * * *
Director: Denys Arcand
Starring: Lothaire Bluteau

Denys Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal is a thoughtful and well-constructed film which attempts to examine the relationship between people and religion, between ideas and practice. In it a passion play is staged which adheres perhaps too closely to Jesus’ teachings, starring an actor whose life begins to parallel that of the character he’s playing. It’s a film that takes religious teachings very seriously but casts a critical eye at the politics of organized religion.

Daniel (Lothaire Bluteau) is an actor much admired by other actors but whose career has never taken off due to the years that he’s spent abroad. A Montreal church, recognizing that the passion play that they stage every year has become stale, hires Daniel to direct and star in a retooled version. To do this, he gathers four other struggling actors to help him: Martin (Remy Girard) and Rene (Robert Lepage), actors he finds doing voice-over work, one for a porn film and the other for an educational film; Mireill (Catherine Wilkening), an actress more appreciated for her looks than her abilities, and Constance (Johanne-Marie Tremblay), a veteran of the passion play whom Daniel learns has been carrying on an affair with the Father Leclerc (Gilles Pelletier).

The play that the troupe puts on is not the play that the church is expecting, leading Father Leclerc to attempt to shut it down. It’s too literal, it’s too radical, and the response it provokes from the audience is too impassioned. There are members of the audience who speak to Daniel as if he really is Jesus and he himself begins to exude a different aura as events in his life begin to echo biblical stories about Jesus. One of the things that I really enjoyed about the movie is that it doesn’t hit you over the head with the parallels that it’s making. Arcand obviously has a firm handle on the subject, but he never lets the material become overbearing. There is an ease with which the film puts Daniel through the paces so that it doesn’t seem contrived or forced.

Existing on the periphery of the story, orbiting around Daniel like distant satellites, are characters whose purpose is neither to follow nor to impede him, but to distort his legacy. One is a member of the media who records and shares whatever facts or rumours about Daniel will make for the best story. The other is an attorney who takes the role of Satan to Daniel’s Jesus and sees a way to use Daniel’s memory to pervert his message and make a profit. These two characters, along with the church leaders who want to shut down the play, are like shadows steadily crowding in on Daniel, obscuring the light he is trying to impart.

Anchoring the film is the quiet central performance by Blutheau. He plays Daniel with a great deal of subtlety and grace, the full scope of which didn’t even really hit me until days after I’d watched the movie. The direction by Arcand is equally assured and engaging, though I do have one qualm: the music in the film dates it ridiculously. I mean, nothing says 1980s like a soulful electric guitar solo segue from one scene to another. Other than that, though, it’s a great film from top to bottom.

Canadian Film Review: C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005)

* * * 1/2
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Starring: Marc-André Grodin, Michel Coté, Danielle Proulx

C.R.A.Z.Y. is a film that I wanted to like a lot more than I actually did. The central performance by Marc-André Grodin is fantastic, and the film itself has moments of greatness, but ultimately Jean-Marc Vallée’s coming-of-age drama is somewhat lacking in focus, making for a film that wants to be more than it actually is.

Grodin plays Zach, the fourth son of Gervais (Michael Coté) and Laurianne (Danielle Proulx), and one who suffers the misfortune of being born on Christmas Eve (a circumstance with which I completely sympathize, having been a Christmas Eve baby myself). Much of the film is concerned with Zach’s emerging homosexuality and the attempts by both himself and his father to come to terms with it. The film is at its best when it explores the relationship between these two characters, both of whom recognize Zach’s burgeoning sexuality and go out of their way to avoid acknowledging it, as if by doing so it will resolve itself and simply go away. One of the film’s most powerful moments comes early, when Gervais walks in on young Zach trying on his mother’s clothes, and his voice-over informs us sadly that in this moment, he unwittingly declared war on his father. In scenes like this one, where the film deals directly and sincerely with this relationship that seems to become more fraught every day, it hits upon a truth that makes it incredibly compelling.

However, this is only part of the story that the film wants to tell, and a great deal of time is focused on Raymond (Pierre-Luc Brillant), one of Zach’s brothers, an addict whose troubles with drugs and the law more or less hold his family hostage until his inevitable death. This section of the film is strong in and of itself, but putting it together with Zach’s story makes for a narrative that can occasionally feel overloaded, like two films that have been smashed together into one.

The four main performances are all fantastic, especially that of Grodin, who delivers a well-rounded and engaging performance as someone who longs for his father’s acceptance even as he’s rejecting everything that his father represents. As Raymond, Brillant delivers a high energy performance, tearing through the family like a tornado. He doesn’t do much that doesn’t cause the family pain, but there are little moments that make you understand why the family continues to give him chance after chance. As the parents, Proulx and Coté are great, with Laurianne acting as the glue trying to hold the fragile family together, and Gervais struggling with the fact that the family hasn’t turned out the way he had planned. That he isn’t presented to us as a villain attests to the strength of the film and the performance. This is a very real character, one who struggles to understand the men that his sons have become and who often reacts in ways that are hurtful, but he isn’t a monster. He’s just a man coming to terms with the fact that he can’t be in control of everything.

There’s a lot that this film gets really right – particularly the little details inherent in being part of a family, perfectly capturing the way that family traditions can be at once absolutely mortifying but also incredibly comforting – but it’s like too much of a good thing. As good as the individual elements of C.R.A.Z.Y. are, it doesn’t blend all of these elements cohesively. When, at the close of the film we realize that the title refers to the five brothers, it feels a little like a cheat - we only ever get to know two of brothers while the other three occupy the very edges of the story, as minor as characters can possibly be. In no way is C.R.A.Z.Y. a bad film, but it is a frustrating film in many ways because every frame reveals how great it could have been if only it were a little more tightly focused.

Canadian Film Review: Bon Cop, Bad Cop (2006)

Director: Erik Canuel
Starring: Colm Feore, Patrick Huard

In Bon Cop, Bad Cop, Erik Canuel takes a familiar formula – the buddy cop film – and turns it into something fresh and distinctly Canadian. There’s something for everyone here: a lot of action, a lot of humour, some sex, some hockey, and a light-hearted take on Canadian Anglo-Franco relations. It’s a film that perhaps can’t be completely appreciated unless you are Canadian or have lived in Canada for a significant amount of time, but even if you don’t meet that criteria this is still an accessible film, engaging and well-made.

It begins with a murder. When the victim is tossed from a helicopter and lands on a billboard which straddles the border between Ontario and Quebec, Toronto cop Martin Ward (Feore) and Montreal cop David Broussard (Huard) are assigned to work together until the proper jurisdiction can be determined. It becomes apparent pretty quickly that the murder is hockey related as more victims pile up, each one providing a clue to the next in the form of a tattoo given to the victims by the killer. When the killer finally reveals himself, he explains that he’s out to get the people who have ruined hockey by selling out teams and players to the States. It’s a… very Canadian motivation.

The trope of oil and water partners is no doubt familiar to you, but what makes it special here is the way that it is used to play on the national consciousness. Martin and David aren’t just two cops whose styles differ and who don’t get along; they also represent the age-old rivalry between English and French speaking Canadians, and more specifically the rivalry between Toronto and Montreal. Martin is a staid, by-the-book guy who isn’t cool – which falls in line with Canadians’ general view of Toronto. David, on the other hand, is sexy, kind of dangerous and plays by his own rules, and is definitely cool – which falls in line with Canadians’ general view of Montreal. On the surface we’re presented with two individuals who must learn to get along, but they’re representative of the entire nation.

The film is very funny in a completely Canada-centric way, from the scene at the beginning when David’s superior attempts to translate first from French for Martin’s sake and then from English for David’s, only to discover that he’s the only one in the room who doesn’t have a firm grasp of both languages, to the following exchange between Martin and a Quebequois suspect:

     Therrien: What planet are you from?
     Martin: Toronto.
     Therrien: That explains why I hate your face.

My favourite, however, is the scene following one of the film’s many explosions. David and Martin have just escaped from a burning house that was once a grow-op. Having inhaled a lot of the smoke, both are a little… giddy. When he has to explain to his superior what has happened, Martin (between giggles) assures him that he has a perfectly good “halibi.” This is a movie that totally embraces the idiosyncrasies of Canadian culture and runs with them, which makes it a very rewarding film to watch and makes it easy to understand how this became the highest grossing Canadian film ever in Canada, and why it took home last year’s Genie for Best Picture.

If you’re looking for a realistic police drama, this isn’t the film for you (it’s difficult to effectively resolve a case when you go around blowing up witnesses and suspects and using a would-be victim as bait). This is more or less a satire of the cop movie formula (sort of in the same spirit as the Lethal Weapon movies), hockey fanaticism, and real-life Anglo-Franco relations. It's directed and edited in a crisp, well-paced style, the inter-play between Feore and Huard is great, and it's ultimately just a really fun movie to watch. This is a definite must-see for any Canadian movie fan.

Canadian Film Review: The Barbarian Invasions (2003)

Director: Denys Arcand
Starring: Rémy Girard, Stéphane Rousseau, Marie-Josée Croze

The Barbarian Invasions is a film so delightful and charming that you forgive it for the clichés on which its story hangs. There are a lot of things about the film you’ve probably seen before: a group of old friends reuniting and both celebrating and lamenting the way their lives have changed; the libertarian father and his distant, conservative son who is determined to be nothing like him; the Casanova whose former lovers come together, in this case to give him a proper send off. But, these familiar elements are perhaps a credit, rather than a debit to the film. We feel instantly comfortable in this world, as if we know these people – and that’s how the film gets to you.

The film begins with Rémy (Girard), a college professor on his deathbed. We are made immediately to understand that he’s had a… colourful love life as we watch his latest lover berate him for his history of infidelity. Rémy knows he doesn’t have much time left and doesn’t bother much in the way of an apology. He knows who he is and what he’s done, and he’s made peace with it even if she hasn’t. As the film progresses, his ex-wife, two of his former lovers and a couple of his lifelong friends will join him to spend his final days in reminiscence. Also on hand, albeit reluctantly, is his son Sébastian (Rousseau). Sébastian, who has always resented Rémy’s laisser-faire attitude towards relationships is determined to be different from his father, is determined, in fact, to have nothing to do with his father until some intervention on the part of his mother. Sébastian is shocked when he arrives at the hospital and the film is, at least in part, a condemnation of the Canadian health care system, which is presented here as overburdened and unorganized.

Sébastian goes about trying to make Rémy more comfortable, first by bribing someone at the hospital so that he can move Rémy to a floor that has been left entirely vacant after renovations, and then by bribing some of Rémy’s students into visiting him, making him believe that he’s made an impact on their lives. Sébastian does these things less out of love for his father than out of a need to do something, anything, to control this situation which leaves him feeling so powerless. He further takes control by bypassing traditional medicine, which has lost its effect on Rémy, to find something to ease his pain. A nurse suggests heroin, which Sébastian procures through Nathalie (Croze), the daughter of Rémy’s friend/ex-lover. Croze is wonderful as Nathalie, warning Sébastian from the outset that he shouldn’t trust a heroin addict to be reliable (a point she later proves) and later shooting up with Rémy.

This is a very conversational film, which is part of its charm because these people are so good at talking. They talk about art and politics, about love and sex, and they do so in such a way that you believe that these people have been drifting in and out of each other’s lives for decades. There are stories told in the film that seem to have nothing to do with the narrative – one friend tells of a meeting with an ex-girlfriend, Rémy tells a story about visiting China and attempting to flirt with a beautiful woman by praising the Communist government, only to discover that that system has led to much suffering on her part – but which nevertheless fit so well with the film as a whole. This is a film that not only acknowledges that its characters have thoughts and ideas and read books, but pauses to listen to them talk these things out.

The performances in the film are excellent across the board, especially those of Girard, as the dying man coming to terms with a life lived to its fullest, and Croze, as the damaged woman hurtling towards her own destructive end. The film ends on a note that is ambiguous, but also perhaps appropriate. There’s been some suggestion that Nathalie’s troubles are rooted in part by the hedonistic lifestyle that was enjoyed by her mother (and Rémy, and the others like them) when she was growing up. The film ends with her and Sébastian sharing a moment that you begin anticipating as soon as they meet. To get involved might destroy Sébastian (or, at least, his image of himself), but it might be Nathalie’s salvation. Life can be messy that way, and we don’t know for sure what will develop from this brief encounter. But to end on that note, with this loose end left untied, is the best way for a film like this to conclude because it suggests that life carries on, which is what The Barbarian Invasions has been trying to convey to us from the very beginning.

Canadian Film Review: Away From Her (2007)

Director: Sarah Polley
Starring: Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, Olympia Dukakis

This is quite simply a fantastic film, and one that treats its characters with a lot more respect than the vast majority of films. Consider how often characters in their sixties are allowed to be the focal point of films, and consider also that though those characters may be allowed to be in love, rarely is enough consideration given them that they’re allowed to feel lust. This is a story that knows that life carries on beyond the age of forty and that feelings don’t become fossilized and forgotten and die away in later age. That the film is guided by the hand of a 27-year-old director is astounding.

The film is adapted from a short story by Alice Munro called The Bear Came Over The Mountain and is true to the original without relying on viewer’s having read it to provide depth to the film. The movie is very carefully paced, allowing us to get to know the characters and get some sense of the history that exists between them. The film also makes excellent use of the surrounding landscape, using it to complement the development of the story and the characters. Most of the film takes place during the winter, literally taking place around Christmas time, and figuratively taking place during the winter of Fiona (Christie) and Grant’s (Pinsent) life together. There are moments when the landscape is so vast and blank with snow that we get a sense of the loneliness that these two people, torn apart from each other by nature, must be feeling.

This is a film without pretence. It doesn’t pretend that a marriage that has survived for some forty years has done so easily or without obstacles. It is established fairly early that Grant used to have a roving eye, that Fiona forgave him and they managed to make the marriage work afterwards – which, of course, doesn’t mean that the business was ever forgotten. After Fiona is checked into a care facility and develops an attachment to another patient, Grant wonders if perhaps she’s just playing a game with him, punishing him for the affairs that he had in the past. Later, in a conversation with a nurse who has become a confidante, he remarks that in spite of their problems, things were never that bad. She replies (in what is one of the best scenes in the film) that in her experience, it’s always the husbands who think things were never that bad, and wonders if the wives would agree.

The performances in the film are excellent across the board. Olympia Dukakis, as the wife of the patient Fiona develops a relationship with, brings a wonderful mixture of stability and fragility to her character. There’s a scene where she leaves a message on Grant's machine, asking him out on what is officially not a date, even though it kind of is a date, and then sits alone in her kitchen waiting for him to call her back. Her loneliness is tangible, and Dukakis plays it without vanity. She has no illusions about her life or the potential of a relationship with Grant. She’s informed by a lifetime of experience, and she’s entering on this new adventure with clear eyes. It’s a brave performance, playing as she does a character who could easily veer into being pathetic, but never does. Dukakis brings a solidity to her that helps ground the film.

Christie is wonderful as Fiona, and absolutely deserves all the praise she’s gotten. There are scenes where she doesn’t speak, but simply looks at her surroundings and we sense her grasping for understanding even as she disappears deeper and deeper into herself. The performance is never showy and never rings false. However, for me, it’s Pinsent who really carries the film. He spends much of the film in denial – convinced that she’s just forgetful, convinced that she’ll only be in the care facility for a short time, convinced that she’ll get better – and then slowly comes to accept things for being the way that they are. We know that he’s behaved badly in his marriage, but we also believe that he cares about Fiona’s happiness. When he first approaches the Dukakis character at the beginning of the film, we think maybe that he’s come to ask her to remove her husband from the facility. Later, we find that she’s already done that and Grant has come to request that she put him back in, because Fiona is depressed without his company. Grant is jealous of the relationship, but willing to encourage it if it will help keep Fiona from getting sicker. Like Christie, Pinsent never rings a false note and it’s a shame that he’s been largely ignored in favour of his co-star.

This really is a great character film, one in which people are allowed to speak and interact with each other in ways that feel utterly natural. The acting is great and the direction is solid and sure-footed. Polley will have a lot to live up to, should she decide to step behind the camera again. Here’s hoping that she does.