KARLOVY VARY -- A random tragedy helps heal the broken bonds between a widowed father and his adult sons in this quietly engrossing Canadian indie drama, which is fresh from its world premiere as part of the official competition at the Karlovy Vary film festival. As in his three previous features, the young writer-director Rafal Ouellett offers crisp narrative purity and novelistic insights into family dynamics, and all on a minimal budget. The bilingual, mostly French dialogue may limit the films prospects outside Francophone territories, but Camion could well find a global niche audience among fans of subtitled subtlety. Nuanced and literary in texture, it lives up to the traditionally high standards of Quebecois cinema.
The story opens with a bang. Germain, a veteran trucker living in Quebecs rural hinterlands, is left shell-shocked after a young woman smashes her car into his truck and dies of her injuries. Although Germain is not legally responsible, the crushing burden of guilt still drives him towards suicidal despair. He reaches out to his two thirtysomething sons, introverted Montreal janitor Sam (Patrice Dubois) and womanising drifter Alain (Stephane Breton), who lives in a low-rent motel on Canadas Atlantic coast. Three lost souls, all frozen in time by different traumatic events, are reunited by another familys catastrophic loss.
The films notional star, Julien Poulin, is a Quebecois TV veteran with an agreeably rubbery and life-battered face. But most of the storys emotional force derives from the two actors playing his sons, who are mismatched physically but convincing in their easy screen chemistry. In contrast to the soft-faced, blue-eyed, soulfully sad Dubois, the dark and lean Breton is the films real emotional dynamo, a toothy livewire with an unsettling resemblance to Jerry Seinfeld after a decade-long drink-and-drugs binge.
Ouellett has a long track record of directing music shows for television in his native Quebec. Music is smartly integrated into Camion, sometimes even informing the dialogue. The spare score features a mix of chilly orchestral chamber pieces and mournful folk-rock, including a dark alt-country ballad by Richmond Fontaine that sparks a conversation between the two brothers on their long road journey home, wittily highlighting their wildly different psyches. Later, on a therapeutic hunting expedition with their father, both brothers sing a few twangy bars of Duelling Banjos from John Boormans backwoods horror classic Deliverance, a small but wholly plausible pop-culture observation that also serves as a self-referential movie in-joke.
Some of the strengths of Camion are, perhaps inevitably, also weaknesses. While the dramatically staged accident is a strong start, any film about a lonely widowers slide into guilt-ridden inertia will unavoidably have its downer moments. Ouellett shoots rural Quebec in autumnal browns and greys, which suits the flattened emotional mood, but does tend to deepen the storys depressing drabness. Plus, of course, plotlines about mismatched brothers working out their father issues are older than the Bible.
To his credit, Ouellett turns all this potentially clichd glumness into an absorbing story about an estranged family reconnected and redeemed by terrible events. The detail feels rich, the dialogue authentic. Even the festive finale, potentially corny in a less subtle movie, is handled with understated grace.
Venue: Karlovy Vary film festival, premiere screening, July 1
Production companies: Coop Vido de Montral, Tlfilm Canada
Cast: Julien Poulin, Patrice Dubois, Stphane Breton, Nomie Godin-Vigneau
Director: Rafal Ouellett
Writer: Rafal Ouellett
Producer: Stphanie Morissette
Cinematography: Genevive Perron
Editor: Rafal Ouellet
Music: Viviane Audet, Robin-Jol Cool
Sales company: Coop Vido de Montral
Rating TBC, 95 minutes.
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