Maelström

Maelström (Director: Denis Villeneuve): My first exposure to Villeneuve’s work was his wickedly funny and stylish short Next Floor, and his latest fea­ture Polytechnique just won the award for Best Canadian Film of 2009 from the Toronto Film Critics Association, so I was eager to watch this film, which ori­gin­ally played to con­sid­er­able buzz at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival. I’m sorry that it took me so long to catch up with this unique film, and I can tell you that I’m going to be watching Polytechnique and every other bit of film Villeneuve has had a hand in cre­ating as soon as I can.

Maelström is the sort of auda­cious film­making that begins its tale with an untrans­lated title card in Norwegian, con­tinues with a talking fish as nar­rator, and then assaults you with the strains of “Good Morning Starshine” (from the musical Hair) over scenes of a woman having an abor­tion. And that’s just the first five minutes.

Bibiane Champagne (Marie-Josée Croze) is a suc­cessful young entre­preneur, run­ning a fash­ion­able boutique with her brother. They are the chil­dren of a famous designer, and this seems to weigh heavily on her. Weighing more heavily is the guilt she feels for the abor­tion she’s just had. After a night of partying to forget her pain, she drives drunk, hit­ting a ped­es­trian on her way home. She finds out a few days later in the news­paper that the man dragged him­self out of the road, staggered home, and died sit­ting at his kit­chen table. With her guilt now doubled, she’s dis­con­nected even fur­ther from her work and pon­ders sui­cide. Planning to ditch her car in the river, she almost drowns, but emerges from the water hoping for a second chance at life.

Her second chance arrives in the form of the son of the man she’s killed. While his father was a Norwegian fish­erman, Evian (Jean-Nicolas Verreault) is a scuba diver (or charm­ingly referred to in the sub­titles, a “frogman”), working for Hydro Quebec in the remote northern part of the province. When Bibiane is drawn to the morgue at the same time as Evian, they begin an enig­matic rela­tion­ship in which Bibiane pre­tends to be his father’s neigh­bour. Eventually the truth will come out and these two people will have to decide how to move for­ward with their lives.

Maelström has the sump­tuous visual style and mor­bidity of Peter Greenaway and the obses­sion with coin­cid­ence and weighty philo­soph­ical themes as Krzysztof Kieslowski. While that might not appeal to everyone, it’s a dream match for me, and while I caught myself a few times thinking the film was just a bit too pretty, I was solidly engrossed throughout and sat­is­fied by the conclusion.

Bold film­makers like Villeneuve are rare, and they can often make ter­rible mis­takes in judge­ment. Witness Julio Medem’s most recent film Caótica Ana (review), or Jaco van Dormael’s Mr. Nobody, both huge per­sonal dis­ap­point­ments after I’d enjoyed their earlier work. But I’m always willing to give film­makers like these another chance, hoping that failure doesn’t blunt their appetite for risk-taking. Or mine.

(9/10)

Tagged as: canada, quebec