ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Quebec

Tres Belle Journee (Very Nice Day): What a Lovely Day

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Set in Montreal, Tres Belle Journee tells the story of Jeremie (Guillaume Laurin), a bike courier who delivers anonymous packages and disappears into the night. Living alone in his apartment, Jeremie generally keeps to himself. However, when a social media celebrity moves in across the way, Jeremie’s world is upended and his ‘very nice day’ continues to get worse.

Directed by Patrice Laliberte, Tres Belle Journee is a fascinating piece that feels more like an exercise than it does I have a narrative. The first Quebec feature film shot entirely on iPhone, Journee maintains a more fluid style with its storytelling. There is an ebb and flow to this film it makes it feel improvisational at times. Whereas this approach doesn’t always work in narrative filmmaking, Journee somehow manages to hold itself together with almost lyrical movement between scenes. As such, there’s an openness to the film that allows its creative team to push the boundaries of their storytelling.

While the film follows Jeremie’s travels, what takes place over the course of his journey is less important than the questions that he asks along the way. With earnestness and honesty, Lalibertie takes the opportunity to explore the banality of everyday life. For example, as he bikes from delivery point to delivery point, Jeremie reflects on the nature of reality and our role within it. Reflections regarding simulation theory lean into the idea that reality is a construct as we simply play the part that we have been programmed to do. Whether it’s his own importance held up against the celebrity of his neighbour or simply the meaninglessness of reality, Journeegives voice to a generation that’s simply trying to figure out the point of it all. (In fact, Journee almost feels like a cinematic representation of the Scriptural passage that suggests that ‘everything is meaningless’.) 

While the film is far from hopeless, it certainly believes that perhaps we are missing out on some key component of life. Jeremie’s role as delivery man seems to be one that passes on adventures to other people, not himself. Travelling from client to client, he is barely recognized by those he disappears from their imagination the moment that he leaves their sight. To them, he means little. A means to an end for those obsessed with their own lives. In this way, there is a certain level of emptiness to his life of loneliness and isolation. (In fact, it’s worth noting that this sense of isolation becomes more poignant when one considers the effect of the pandemic on our relationships. As we psychologically recover from the trauma of imposed isolation, so too have become more self-reflective of what it means to live in community with one another.)

While the film will not be for everyone due to its quieter tone and slower pacing, there is enough under the surface of Tres Belle Journee that makes it worth the time. This is a film that wants to explore the meaning of life through the eyes of one seemingly unimportant man in the midst of a world fueled by the self-importance of others. Although Journee doesn’t land on any definitive statement on these issues, the beauty of this film is that it’s more about asking questions than answering them.

Tres Belle Journee is available in theatres now.

You Will Remember Me – Societal Dementia

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“We are witnessing the disintegration of the world!”

The motto of Québec is “Je me souviens” (“I remember”). It’s on their license plates, so that idea is always present for Québecois. That is not stated in Éric Tessier’s film You Will Remember Me, but it is certainly a central aspect of the story. While it is built around the dementia of the central character, it is much more about the wider world and our own inability to remember, even in the short term.

Édouard (the wonderful Rémy Girard) is a famous historian who is quickly becoming more and more affected by dementia. He has become too much for his wife to deal with. When she dumps him off with his daughter, who has to leave on an assignment, he is cared for by her boyfriend. But when he has to go to a meeting, he calls on his own daughter, Bérénice (Karelle Tremblay). Bérénice is young and drifting. However, she and Édouard form a strange bond even though he really can’t remember who she is. Eventually, he mentally connects Bérénice with another daughter, Nathalie, who is no longer around. Although they are so different, Édouard and Bérénice are able to provide what each needs in their lives.

The fact that Édouard was a historian is obviously important. He has spent his life with memories. He views the past as important. But now that past is slipping away from him. He doesn’t form new memories, so he only has the past.  Early in their relationship, Bérénice talks about history being unimportant. (“That craps over. There’s more to life than that.”) But later, Édouard shares with her an important event in Québec history (that coincides with Nathalie’s conception). It is a vibrant memory that he brings to life for her. (And it is a reminder of “Je me souviens”.)

While the struggles of a person with dementia are serious, this film blends in just the right amount of humor to make the story enjoyable. But it is not just a story of a person’s fading memories and of a young woman finding a new way of seeing her life. It is a reflection of who we are as a society. Édouard often rants about the Facebook/Twitter/YouTube world. At first it seems like the typical complaint of an aging Luddite. But we begin to see that there is something more existential to his views.

Later in the film he delivers an amazing monologue (ironically, that he streams using Bérénice’s phone). In that speech, Édouard shows a parallel between his disease, which is eating away at his memory and who he is, and the world that is so filled with information that each new thing pushes out what came before it. Just as he can’t remember what happened five minutes ago, so too do we not form memories. We can’t decide what is real or important. Instead, he says “You are prisoners of the eternal present.” (This monologue could well be my favorite movie scene of the year.)

The film challenges us to think about not so much the onslaught of information that can overwhelm us, but how we will remember the important things in life—love, community, values, freedom. Most importantly, we need to remember who we are. Without that memory all is lost. I have a new appreciation for the depth of Québec’s motto.

You Will Remember Me is available on Virtual Cinema.

Photos courtesy of Corinth Films.

Days of Darkness – Are We in a New Dark Age?

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[NOTE: I wrote this review in 2008 after seeing the film at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, expecting to publish it when it was released in the US. However, the film never got a release. I’ve often wondered what happened to it in all those years. Now it is available on AMC+ and IFC Unlimited (both accessible through Prime Video Channels and both offer a one week free trial.)]

Days of Darkness is the concluding film of the Denys Arcand trilogy that also includes The Decline of the American Empire and Barbarian Invasions. (It could be argued that Jesus of Montreal is also part of this group of films. I’m unsure about the more recent The Fall of the American Empire, which I haven’t seen.) The two earlier films shared common actors and characters.  Two of the characters from those films show up in minor roles in this film, but by and large, this is a very different kind of film from the first two.  The titles of the film harken back to the Roman Empire.  The decadence leads to weakness that allows the barbarians to invade and bring about the Dark Ages.  As a Canadian on the border of the American empire, Arcand seems to be saying that he sees the same sort of process happening in current society.  He may well be right.  What really connects Days of Darkness with the trilogy is that The Barbarian Invasions is about trying to escape death; this film is about trying to escape life.

Henry Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”  That certainly describes Jean-Mark in Days of Darkness.  Jean-Marc leads a pretty boring life.  His world is grey – his house, his car, the sky.  His marriage isn’t happy.  His children aren’t happy.  He’s a bureaucrat who spends his day listening to unhappy people.  But he has his imagination.  Like Walter Mitty, Jean-Marc spends much of his time in his daydreams – but this is Walter Mitty as if he had been written by Woody Allen and Hugh Hefner.  Jean-Marc’s fantasy life is not just an escape; it is a critique of the many ways the world has lost its way.

The real world of this film is nearly as surreal as Jean-Marc’s imaginary world.  The great bureaucracy where he works is housed in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.  It is literally a bureaucratic maze.  His co-workers have to take classes in how to laugh.  The problems he deals with each day are unbelievable, and yet each is an actual case.  (My favorite is a man who was walking on the side walk when a car hit a streetlight.  The streetlight fell on the man, who lost his legs.  The city charges everyone involved in the destruction of public property, so he has to pay for half the streetlight.)  There is rarely anything he can actually do.  One of the lines that sums up this world is “You’re wasting your time; it’s pointless.”

In his dreams Jean-Marc is in control.  He is the lover of a famous movie star and a TV news reporter.  He solves the world’s problems.  He is famous and rich and happy.  Those who are his nemeses are dealt with harshly (but of course they deserve it).

The film reflects the malaise that so often becomes part of life as we go through the same routines day after day.  Not only our personal lives, but our corporate life just seems to be one repetition after another.  Consider the skepticism with which we greet political campaigns.  Do any of the candidates live up to the dreams we have for someone to lead us?  Following Arcand’s post-empire metaphor, the meaninglessness of staged political debates or of reality television or blogs that do nothing but blather reflect a world that is as devoid of wisdom as those centuries before the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

If we follow the world into this malaise, it is indeed pointless and we are wasting our time.  Instead all the Jean-Marcs in the world (and that includes us all) need to find a life that has meaning beyond the limits of our minds.

Monday at AFIFest 2018

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Although I’ve seen my share of comedies at AFIFEST Presented by Audi, it seems that film festivals often show darker films than many people are used to. That is in part because they are made not so much to sell tickets to a large audience as to bring a story to life that the filmmaker wants to tell. My choices for Monday all had a bit of darkness to them, even when they were showing hope.

Angels are Made of Light is a documentary by James Longley about a school in Kabul, Afghanistan. After years (actually decades) of conflict, the educational system in this old part of town is in ruins—literally. Even as a new school is being built, the walls in the old school are falling down. We meet some of the students (mostly boys, although there is a section that focuses on girls) that are trying to get an education, but the realities of their lives make it hard. Many need to work to help their families. The film weaves in some of the history of Afghanistan and its many wars.

Romanian director Ioana Uricaru gives us Lemonade, a story set in the U.S. about a woman trying to get her green card. She has married a man (For love? We don’t know.) and brought her young son over. But a corrupt immigration official and various other challenges begin to ruin the life she has made here and hopes to establish. It offers a look at the desperation that many face as they try to find a life in America.

Playing with Lemonade was a short, Desert Rats, by Shaz Bennett, a story of a girl whose father was abandoned as a child in the Utah desert by a polygamous father. She returns to the desert to remember him.

 

From Quebec comes Genesis from director Philippe Lesage. It is the story of two siblings as they struggle with love, belonging, and alienation. Guillaume (Thoédore Pellerin) is something of the class clown in school, but he is often the odd man out in social situations. His older sister, Charlotte (Noée Abita) leaves a safe, but unexciting relationship, but in her new relationships she is vulnerable both emotionally and physically. Both are seeking to understand how to deal with their yearnings and find someone to love. The last half hour of the film switches to a summer camp with a young boy and girl in their first experience of young love. That add-on is meant to remind us of the simplicity and awkwardness of youthful yearnings, but really distracts from the more powerful stories of Guillaume and Charlotte.

 

The Passion of Augustine – When Times Were A-Changin’

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“Modernity is killing me.”

The 1960s were a time of momentous change. We remember much of the social upheaval, but we often forget what major shifts happened in the church. As a bishop says in The Passion of Augustine, “Everything is moving too fast. Modernism is attacking us on all fronts: Vatican II, loss of faith, fewer vocations, and worst of all: the Ministry of Education . . .. Prepare for the worst.” The pressures of the changes play out within a small convent school in Quebec.

Mother Augustine (Céline Bonnier) heads the Sacred Heart Convent and the school for girls that specializes in music training. It is a very regimented life—both for the nuns and the students. The school often turns out winners in the provincial music contest. But things may change. The government wants to take over education, and the convent schools may have to close. Augustine battles with her superior over the convent. And then Augustine’s niece Alice (Lysandre Ménard) is brought to the school because her mother must leave. Alice is a gifted pianist, but is disruptive. Alice brings a bit of the social changes of the outside world into the convent. She also brings change into Augustine’s relationships.

At the same time, the church and convent are going through changes brought on by Vatican II (the 1962-65 Ecumenical Council of Catholic Bishops that brought major revolutions to the Church). At the beginning of the film we see a bit of a Latin mass. At just about the midpoint there is a folk mass. The shift is startling—and more than a bit jarring for those who have built their lives around the church. When the time comes for the nuns to abandon their old habits and vails, we see that it is a painful and emotional time for them. Not just because of the clothes, but because the security of their chosen life was being stripped away. How shocking and even distressing it must have been for them to go from dressing “like 18th century widows” (as one of the nuns put it) to airline stewardesses.

But this is also a very personal trial for Augustine. It is not just the changes around her, but the changes within her as well. We see glimpses of her past that show us she was not always a pious nun. And in her struggles with the church hierarchy, she must choose how she is going to best fulfil her gifts.

Change often brings a feeling of chaos. But that chaos often soon becomes the new established order. The changes from Vatican II were not easily embraced by some in the Catholic Church. In all churches the prospect of change can lead to dissension. (How many church board members does it take to change a light bulb? CHANGE?) Everything around us seems to be in a state of constant flux. We may rely on what we think are foundational institutions like the church to keep us grounded. But like everything else, those too undergo change. It is good to remember that often God can work through those changes to continue to fill the world and our lives with God’s love.

I first saw the film at the Newport Beach Film Festival two years ago. At NBFF it won five jury prizes: Best Feature Film, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. I don’t know if it ever got a non-festival release in the US, but now it is becoming available on VOD. I’m happy to have the chance to revisit this story of the struggles of faith in a changing world.

Photos courtesy of Under the Milky Way