The Life Chaotic

Elle Veut le Chaos (2008) - Côté






Enigmatic in its beautiful black and white images, Denis Côté's Elle Veut le Chaos/All That She Wants tells a slight story of Coralie (Eve Duranceau), who ekes out a living in nowhereland next to a highway near Montreal. Côté seems to have a knack for lightly sketching out these sort of small time outsiders while keeping their mysterious origins intact. Coralie lives with Jacob, an older man/father figure. Their lives seem forever indentured to the violent gang, headed by Alain, next door. Their relationships are never clearly defined. As the film plays out, one can guess that they (including Coralie's crazy mother who runs away in the beginning of the film) all belonged to the gang at some point. And they are all somewhat related to Alain.

Pierrot (Laurent Lucas), just came out of jail, comes back and tells Coralie that he wants to take her away to his home in France. But that's not what she wants. Jacob wants to kill Spazz, the most violent of the gang, and get away. Coralie doesn't want that either. Meanwhile, the gang brings in two young Russian girls whores who can't speak French, for their entertainment.

Cause and effect don't really apply to Côté's films. Violence happens abruptly, motivations hidden and unclear and things turn out unexpectedly. The mood he creates is absorbing and has a somewhat otherworldly quality to it. Oh, and fireworks look beautiful in black and white.

Examining the Nature of Gaze

After making its rounds at various festival circuits, and with his new narrative feature Vic and Flo Saw a Bear playing at this year's Berlinale, the adventurous Québécois film critic turned director Denis Côté's intriguing little documentary Bestiaire gets one week theatrical run at Cinefamily in Los Angeles, 2/19 - 2/27.

The documentary starts in an art class where a group of students sketching an inanimate object. They stare at the object intently. The whole sequence is tense and serious. It turns out that the object is a stuffed deer (or is it a baby antelope?). We are looking at the spectators looking at their subjects. Then we move on to grey concrete blocks that are animal holding cells in a zoo. It's Parc Safari in Quebec in wintertime. The film features a series of animals in exquisitely composed tableaux. Who knew that static close ups of animals bobbing their heads above and below the frame can be this hypnotic?

Lions bang on the cage, trying to get out of their small cells. Tigers aimlessly trots back and forth. Just like passive young caretakers of the Parc Safari, we partake in observing these animals in their natural state in captivity. But the film is not really about captive animals. Côté is not an animal rights advocate. Rather, he is interested in the relationship between spectators and their subjects.

Bestiaire, done in a deceptively simple way, has no narrative pull whatsoever. But along with Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Ilisa Barbash's Sweetgrass (2009), it's the best kind of observational documentary as it leaves a lot of room for audience to reflect. It gets interesting especially the beasts look back at you and you feel like you are locked in a staring contest with them. Who's zoomin' who now? 

The film will be preceded by two intriguing shorts Primate Cinema: Apes as Family by Rachel Mayeri and Moving Stories by Nicolas Provost, both have to do with our way of seeing things: while Apes gets the better of us emotionally instead of intellectually, Moving Stories shows us how easily we fall for narratives with such little devices.

Please visit Cinefamily for showtimes and tickets.


Dustin Chang is a freelance writer. His musings and opinions of the world can be seen at www.dustinchang.com

Not too fragile

Curling (2010) - Côté

Jean-François (Emmanuel Bilodeau), a shy middle aged divorcé and his twelve year-old bespectacled daughter, Julyvonne (Philoméne Bilodeau) arrive in the snow swept small town near Quebec. For some reason, JF is deathly afraid for his daughter's safety: he won't let her go to school or interact with anyone. Even when he is out working at a local motel and a bowling alley, he rather wants his daughter inside the house alone all day, studying by herself. Something must have happened prior. Julyvonne's mother is in jail. "The girl is retarded. There is nothing in her eyes!" yells the mother at JK in the visiting cell.

Treading somewhere between Fargo and The Sweet Hereafter, Curling is all about keeping in mind what's left out of its rather simple narrative while watching it. The film's full of loose threads that don't lead you anywhere. Our father and daughter keep to themselves with their blank faces, doing their daily routines, thus obliterating their rather scary surroundings.

Working under scruffy Kennedy, the owner of the bowling alley and Isabelle, his goth-girl cousin, JF/Moustache (as he is called because he dons a thick one), slowly lets his guard down and lets his daughter hang with the local crowd a bit. Julyvonne finds her own darker Alice in Wonderland-like adventure in the frozen forest near their house populated with a tiger and frozen dead bodies. Their actions are at times strange and unorthodox, but it's in their damaged stares that speaks volumes.

Unlike Fargo, which is a tightly written, ultimately soulless genre exercise, Curling, even with all the oddities, is much more humanistic. It demands audiences to invest in JF and Julyvonne's lives because you care for them by the end. The real life father-daughter team (Emmanuel and Philoméne Bilodeau) does an amazing job conveying their damaged characters' fear and resolve through their silences. The film's not all dread though. There are many humorous moments (including the curling fantasy scene) and unexpected tenderness throughout. Winner of the Best Director award at Locarno Film Festival 2010, Curling is written and directed by a French Canadian director Denis Côté. Anchored by the down-to-earth performances from his two leads, Côté skillfully balances the film from going too quirky or too dark. It's one of those films that will linger in your head for days.

Curling plays as a part of New Directors New Films series at MoMA and Film Society of Lincoln Center. For more information and tickets, please click on this link