#emmanuel bilodeau

[ozu-teapot]

Curling | Denis Côté | 2010

[ozu-teapot]

Curling | Denis Côté | 2010

Sophie Desmarais, Emmanuel Bilodeau

[ozu-teapot]

Curling | Denis Côté | 2010

Muriel Dutil, Emmanuel Bilodeau

[ozu-teapot]

Curling | Denis Côté | 2010

Emmanuel Bilodeau, Philomène Bilodeau

[ozu-teapot]

Curling | Denis Côté | 2010

Philomène Bilodeau, Emmanuel Bilodeau

[avantwordfilms]

Curling

dir. Denis Côté

Canada / 2010 / 92 min. / 1.85:1 World Premiere: Locarno Film Festival (2010) US Premiere: New Directors/New Films (2011) Distributor: Big World Pictures

It stands to reason that a film as arcane and thought-provoking as Denis Côté’s masterful latest effort deserves an equally ponderous title, does it not? And, while the namesake Curling is not so wholly ambiguous as An Andalusian Dog or even Magnolia—characters are in literal fact depicted playing the Olympic sport of curling on-screen, after all—the game’s relevance to the narrative or the cinematic lives of its central players is tenuous at best. When considered along a more conceptual arc of thought, however, the label begins to resemble a sort of tonal talisman for decoding the underlying conflict of the film, the tension that lingers like a chilled cloud of breath exhaust in the arctic winter half-light. Think curling, as in the atrophy of a fallen leaf slowly coiling inward as the thermometer mercury plummets. Think even of curling the sport, and the formal elements of a pastime that anchors upon the deliberate sliding of heavy, frozen stones along a sheer bed of ice. There’s a weight, a downward pressure, an innate sense of deterioration slowly descending upon us. In other words, it’s a film that works on you in an extremely visceral way.

Sheltered tween Julyvonne’s awkward eye exam in the opening sequence wryly foreshadows the opaque, just-beyond-focus sensibility that is to follow, as the growing rift between her and overprotective single father Jean-Francois manifests itself in a waking dreamscape laden with surreal encounters and surprising imagery. Played by the real-life father-daughter duo of Emmanuel and Philomène Bilodeau, the simmering of their discord feels truly genuine as Julyvonne is cut off little by little from virtually all contact with the outside world, save for the few, sparsely rationed doses of pop radio she’s permitted—to wit, Debbie Gibson’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” has never taken on such bleak meaning. The pair’s relative isolation slowly begins to invoke enigmatic (if not out-and-out seasonal affective) visions of crime scenes, human bowling pins, and tigers held captive on the snow-coated wastelands of rural Quebec, a testament to the deleterious effects of isolation even in its most well-intentioned observance.

Côté’s inspired artistic vision for the film was rewarded with Best Director honors at Switzerland’s Locarno International Film Festival last year and has bolstered his reputation as one of Canada’s most impressive new filmmakers. In tandem with other talented young Québécois directors like Denis Villeneuve (Incendies, nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film at the 2011 Oscars) and Xavier Dolan (I Killed My Mother, Laurence Anyways), he has helped to introduce a formidable new generation of French-Canadian filmmakers to the world stage.

- Christopher Holmes

[geek-ramblings]

The Revenant Movie Review http://bxffc.bz/1QBPFnM

[tvqc]

The Revenant ou quand l'Oscar revient à l'homme qui n'a pas vendu la peau de l'ours avant de l'avoir tué!

The Revenant ou quand l’Oscar revient à l’homme qui n’a pas vendu la peau de l’ours avant de l’avoir tué!

Leonardo DiCaprio donne corps à la légende du trappeur Hugh Glass en laissant de côté ses statuts de sex-symbol et de star. Il repousse ses propres limites : frôler l’hypothermie, maîtriser la fabrication du feu, être enterré vivant, nager dans une rivière glacée, apprendre deux langues amérindiennes (le pawnee et l’arikara), dépecer des carcasses d’animaux pour y dormir au chaud, j’en passe et…

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