The programming of this year's Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, rapidly becoming Montreal's hottest film festival, follows a definite pattern of darkness. Death and mourning, disability and disfigurement, assisted suicide, child abuse and suburban angst are some of the issues du jour among young, francophone filmmakers. (So much so that this was the subject of a panel discussion.)
Having seen Maxime Giroux's Jo pour Jonathan and Sophie Deraspe's Signes vitaux in the same weekend (both finely crafted, emotional heavy-hitters), I'm feeling a little exhausted and the festival is only half over. I have a high threshold for difficult material, but the sense of malaise is so deep one can't help but wonder what's causing it.
Maybe it's the suburbanization of the Quebec landscape; maybe it's the fading of the Seperatist dream. Whatever the cause, it seems the more Hollywood cranks out vacuous franchise pulp, the further Quebec filmmakers go in the opposite direction, delving into the dark truths of human existence. I greatly respect these young talents for tackling such weighty subject matter even though it may be hard to take.
Nowhere else on earth would these films get made, let alone stand a chance of breaking even at the box office. Today's Quebec films are proof that the cinema can be more than meaningless entertainment when the conditions are right. One can only hope that the audience won't abandon ship.
when you say "young francophone filmmakers" are you implying that only they make dark films and that other linguistic filmmakers don't? or that only francophone films are shown at rendez-vous?
ReplyDeleteAll filmmakers make dark films, of course. It is simply remarkable how many of the films at this festival are so close in terms of content.
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