Denis Villeneuve is arguably the most prominent Canadian filmmaker working today, rising from his early work on independent arthouse fare in Montreal to directing some of the largest and most interesting Hollywood blockbusters in recent years. Following the massive success of Dune: Part Two earlier this year, we take a closer look at some of his earliest films.
AUGUST 32ND ON EARTH (1998)
Villeneuve’s quirky debut film kicks off as disaffected Montreal model Simone (Pascale Bussières) survives a terrible car crash, and faced with her own mortality, abruptly quits her job and asks her best friend Phillipe (Alexis Martin) to father her child. Despite having a girlfriend, Phillipe agrees on the condition that they travel to the desert for the conception. The pair sets off on an ill-fated journey to the Utah salt flats, providing myriad opportunities for complication and misadventure, and allowing Villeneuve to showcase his already arresting visual style, with an assist from cinematographer André Turpin. While the film reveals flashes of Villeneuve’s talent and is full of the kind of quirky nonsensical spiritual motifs that populated so many independent films in the nineties, its greatest downfall is in its realization of its central characters. While the lead actors are appealing enough, the chemistry between their characters leaves much to be desired, and they feel less than fully realized, leaving the audience scratching its head at their true motivations.
MAELSTRÖM (2000)
Maelström is rarely pointed to as one of Villeneuve’s best films, but when I saw it for the first time back in its original theatrical run, I was absolutely captivated. This was the film that sparked my interest not only in Villeneuve, but in the rich and dynamic canon of Québécois cinema, and in my estimation, this film sits alongside the best films of that tradition. Fully embracing elements of the comic and absurd, this dark tale is narrated by an (animatronic) fish as it’s being gutted alive. The story centres on the fantastically named Bibiane Champagne, a depressed young woman who accidentally kills a Norwegian fishmonger in a hit and run before insinuating herself into a romantic relationship with his unsuspecting son. As in many of his projects, Villeneuve’s script sketches a fascinatingly complex portrait of a flawed and not entirely likable woman, giving the eminently talented Marie-Josée Croze the opportunity to shine in an absorbing and nuanced performance that somehow has the audience rooting for her happy ending.
POLYTECHNIQUE (2009)
Villeneuve took a nine-year break after Maelström to hone his craft as a screenwriter and his efforts more than paid off, returning to cinemas with the tense black and white drama Polytechnique. Told through the eyes of two students, Valérie (Karine Vanasse, also a producer on the film) and Jean-François (Sébastien Huberdeau), the film dramatizes the events of the 1989 Montréal Massacre, an antifeminist mass shooting at the École Polytechnique de Montréal that resulted in the deaths of fourteen women. Drawing comparisons to similarly themed films like Gus van Sant’s Elephant, Villeneuve’s film offers a coolly removed and rationally faithful recounting of the event, both standing as a testament to the women who lost their lives that day and allowing the audience to draw their own unmanipulated conclusions.
INCENDIES (2010)
Incendies, the director’s last French-language film, captured global attention and opened the door to Villeneuve’s current Hollywood career. A tragic tale of mythical proportions, the film follows twins Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) as they attempt to unravel the mystery of their recently deceased mother Nawal’s early life. Structured around a series of flashbacks to Nawal’s life in an unnamed Levantine country in the midst of a bloody civil war (heavily influenced by the events of the Lebanese Civil War), the film slowly reveals the complicated circumstances surrounding the birth and disappearance of their previously unknown brother, and what happened to their mother in those years before she was able to escape to a new life in Canada. While the film has faced some criticism for the unlikeliness of its plot twists, I would argue that the story evokes the inevitability of Greek tragedy and is brought back down to earth through the power and humanity of Lubna Azabal’s performance as Nawal.
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