In his first film, West of Pluto (2009), produced in tandem with Myriam Verreault, Henry Bernardet offered a fair and deeply touching portrait of the dreams, wounds, fears and impulses of adolescence through the daily lives of 10 young people from a high school in a suburb of Quebec.
Fifteen years later, the filmmaker does it again with Gamma raysa rich and complex fresco depicting the reality of adolescents in the Saint-Michel district of Montreal, weighing, through its documentary approach inherited from direct cinema, the courage, solidarity and pitfalls which dot the quest for identity of those who are, despite themselves, parachuted between two cultures – and who must learn, even more than the majority, to exist outside the gaze of others.
There we meet Abdel, a lonely teenager who receives a visit from his extroverted cousin, Omar, who has come from Morocco for the holidays. Between parties and tourist attractions, Abdel will quickly become exhausted, both by energy and by Omar’s untimely monologue, to the point of dumping him in a metro station. Then there is Fatima, a supermarket cashier whose relationship with her best friend is threatened by bad company. Finally, there is Toussaint, a young introvert and passionate about fishing. When he finds a washed up bottle on the bank containing a telephone number, he begins a conversation with a woman who will change his vision of the world and of others.
Through the ups and downs of everyday life, discussions around a picnic, evenings at the park and ironic jokes, we hear reflections on the obstacles that stand in the way of these young people. The film therefore addresses questions of immigration, systemic racism, ordinary violence, economic precarity and isolation, without ever falling into caricature and pathos. Simply by going to meet the main stakeholders, showing them in their element and in their reality.
The scenario, elegant and sober, seeks neither to dramatize nor to embellish, which does not prevent it from being imbued with a touch of poetry and a naive beauty, like its subjects. This quest for truth, which has the merit of breaking down many barriers and prejudices, would not have been possible without the frankness and spontaneity of the young amateur actors, who appropriated the lines and who superimposed their experiences on that of their character.
Gamma rays is also intended as a tribute to Montreal, the city, the one that we often travel through without seeing it, in all its splendor and its decrepitude, its liveliness and its kitsch side, as a reminder that slipping into the shoes of others is also a way to look at the world through their eyes, and to rediscover it differently. A soothing film, which makes you want to know what happens next.