Guy Édoin has long been interested in mourning and the sometimes inexplicable phenomena associated with it. In dead water (2006), second part of the trilogy of short films tributaries, the filmmaker portrayed a widower (Gabriel Gascon) haunted by his wife (Monique Miller) urging him to follow her into the afterlife. Both for the spectator and for the character, the ghost seemed very present. In Borders, Édoin plays with the spectator’s head, leading him to doubt more than once what he thought he saw or understood. Like Diane Messier (Pascale Bussières) who, since the death of her father, is no longer the same.
Having kicked her husband (Patrice Godin) out, Diane lives alone with their daughter, Sarah (Mégane Proulx). In order to protect herself from any threat, she places padlocks on the doors and does not hesitate to seize her weapon to scare away hunters who dare to hunt on her land. His paranoia is exacerbated when it is announced that two prisoners on the run could soon cross the Canada-US border.
However, for some time, Diane has believed that the house is haunted by the spirit of her father. Worried about her mental health, her younger sisters, Carmen (Christine Beaulieu), who is having an affair with a woman married (Marie-France Marcotte) to a violent man (Sylvain Massé), and Julie (Marilyn Castonguay), who suffers from infidelity of her husband (Maxime de Cotret), call on their mother (Micheline Lanctôt), who lives in Florida, to help. Wanting to know more about the ancestral home, Diane goes to the bedside of her demented grandmother (Béatrice Picard), who makes a revelation to her that will upset her as much as the viewer.
In known lands
Whether in tributaries or inswamps, Guy Édoin’s view of rural life is intended to be naturalistic. As he films his characters carrying out the various tasks related to the proper functioning of the dairy farm, he evokes Raymond Depardon’s trilogy of documentaries, Peasant profiles. At other times, such as this hunting party between sisters and the moment when they butcher the game while chatting and throwing pikes at each other, Édoin seems to pay homage to the cinema of Pierre Perrault (The luminous beast).
Rejecting the rural point of view, the director illustrates without filter this rigorous world which saw him being born, this harsh, cruel and precarious way of life where traditions wither away. Thus, in the church where the priest (Chimwemwe Miller) struggles to gather his flock, a dead rat floats in the stoup. The autumn he has chosen to show is not that of blazing leaves and golden light, but that of bare branches and gray skies. Having opted for cinemascope, Guy Édoin gives the landscapes a vastness that underlines the isolation of the characters.
Madame and her ghost
If he reveals new aspects of his native town of Saint-Armand, in Estrie, Guy Édoin surprises the viewer even more by gradually leading him towards the supernatural, like Olivier Assayas in personal shopper. As in this disturbing thriller on mourning, whose modest special effects announced those of Bordersparanormal phenomena sometimes occur in the absence of the characters or without them being witnesses.
With its cabinet doors that mysteriously open and its melancholic atmosphere, Borders evokes respectively Sixth Senseby M. Night Shyamalan, and A ghost story, by David Lowery — except that here the entity does not sport a white shroud. What is this presence that the mother thinks she also feels? Real or not, subject of tension in the sorority, disturbing factor for the police officer (Marie-Madeleine Sarr), tired of complaints from the neighborhood, the paternal specter serves as a pretext for a moving exploration of mourning, resilience and reconciliation in a tightly knit and autonomous feminine universe.
After having masterfully embodied the widow Marie Santerre in swamps And Ville-Marie, Pascale Bussières pushes the limits of her talent in the role of a broken woman who we guess is powerful. At his side, as earthy as they are luminous, Christine Beaulieu, Marilyn Castonguay and Micheline Lanctôt prove to be high-level playing partners.