From the Karlovy Vary Festival comes In Broad Daylight, a new horrorish movie written and directed by Quebec filmmaker Emmanuel Tardif. It shows a family unravelling eerily in their pristine home. The family orbits around its newest addition, a less than year old baby. Hélène (Amaryllis Tremblay), the baby’s 17 year old mother and seemingly an emotionless monster, ignores her infant son as he chews on grass. Her beleaguered father (David Savard) steps in to stop the unnamed baby (known only as Bébé) from munching on the lawn. Hélène’s mother and younger brother also live not knowing what their cold-hearted daughter and sister will do. They fear she will inevitably run away and abandon the baby with them.
The film starts out suffocatingly slow and strict to mirror Hélène’s life. After an opening song that plays over the first shots of the movie, only diegetic music is used for long stretches. The slow pace allows us to admire the director’s many well-crafted shots of reflections. And I mean many. The film travels back and forth between the surface of the family’s well-kept pool and through the windows of their many car rides. Every place seems to take a while to get to. In one car scene, Hélène’s mother explains to her son how she’s writing a story based on her daughter’s experience. But she finds her story is more focused on a mysterious him. It’s unclear whether this him is the baby, the baby’s father or Hélène’s own father. Or something else entirely.
Hélène eventually escapes her family and son to go find the child’s father, a one-night stand from 17 months ago. In her absence, we discover that Hélène’s coldness isn’t causing her family’s overwhelming sadness, it’s a product of it. Up to this point everyone’s reactions seem muted aside from the wide-eyed baby’s. Hélène’s departure allows the family’s anger, laughter and madness to burble up from below the surface.
As soon as she’s away from her family, Tremblay impressively transforms Hélène’s character from loathsome to vulnerable. The story back home evolves from a family drama into an Ari Aster-like horror (of Hereditary and Midsommar fame). Hélène’s mother (Karine Gonthier-Hyndman) meditates by the pool with a glass of white wine, a cigarette, and a fly swatter. The flies begin to invade the house, suggesting the presence of something demonic. Hélène’s brother (Elijah Patrice) takes it upon himself to protect the baby, announcing that it will sleep by his side.
A brief interlude shows Hélène’s mother giving her father an oddly wheezing sounding reach around. She asks him to cry during it. If you ever wondered what Mr. Bean would look like getting a handjob, this is the scene for you. A mixture of comedy and wordless fear.
Hélène tracks down the father of her child, but doesn’t initially tell him that she’s had a baby. Their one-night stand happened 17 months prior which would make her 15 or 16 years old at the time they had sex. The father, Antonin (Jean-Simon Leduc), appears to be in his 20s or even 30s. The film addresses the age difference but only somewhat indirectly. We never get a firm answer on how old Antonin is.
Without revealing too much, the film at this point has become a compelling mystery. The director Tardif has described the film as a one-night stand in reverse. I’ll admit I don’t fully understand what that means. That the conception of the child has been undone? In press materials, Tardif has also mentioned a love of abstraction. Maybe that’s why just as the family’s story has started to become more intriguing, it becomes unclear what has actually happened. Although Tardif has created a gripping, suspenseful story, I was left wanting a bit more concrete information. Instead we get a slow shot and a fairly predictable final cameo by one of the flies that have descended upon the house throughout the film.
The direction is sure handed, the movie looks beatiful and the cast is great. Despite a slightly unsatisfying ending, I enjoyed the film and am excited to see more from Tardif.
© 2020-2022. UniversalCinema Mag.