Archipelago has very few equivalents in Quebec cinema, if not the unattached seventh art of Gilles Groulx and a few contemporary directors, including Simon Beaulieu and the duo formed by Mathieu Denis and Simon Lavoie.
It could very well have produced a classic documentary with a historical flavor on the Belle Province seaway. However, it is badly to know his filmmaker Félix Dufour-Laperrière, fan of Chris Marker (Without sun), which plunges again into a non-narrative narrative (after Transatlantic) and animated (following on from New Town).
Starting with reality, the raw material embraces fiction, unfolding within a vivid and limitless imagination, as hypnotizing as it is fascinating. The colors spring from nothing, the melodies of Soft Fire rock the soul and the animation constantly changes style and register, teeming with details and lyricism. Poetry is at the helm of the ship, deciphering a new world.
While the senses are in turmoil, metaphors abound. By superimposing the past on the present, by surveying a sometimes phantasmagorical territory, this experimental UFO inscribes itself in the unconscious, dreaming of a country without borders, visualizing a better tomorrow. A political sub-text that develops in filigree, taking care never to overshadow the heart of the essay that are the images and the sound.
A picture is worth a thousand words
The same cannot be said of the dialogues, a priori powerful and careful, which, by dint of excess, end up creating a backlash where the frozen and mannered words lose their intensity. With the invention leading the way, she could have been pushed further in her way of integrating the word into the form in place, which is the case when Joséphine Bacon recites one of her collections in Innu-aimun. What appears on the screen is so beautiful and invigorating that the rest appears superfluous and redundant.
A faux pas like a drop of water in the ocean, sublimated by the generous artistic gesture that constantly broadens and pushes back the political and cinematographic possibilities by putting the cinephile at the center of its concerns. It is he who lives this unique journey, meditating if he wishes on its ins and outs, while he can quite simply let himself be transported by this impressionist flow, swapping analysis for emotions.
The resulting experience, striking in many ways, makes you want to immerse yourself in it more than once, so rich in meaning. Undoubtedly one of the great Quebec frescoes of 2021.
Indoors.
Consult the film schedule
Animation
Archipelago
Felix Dufour-Laperriere
With the voices of Florence Blain Mbaye, Mattis Savard-Verhoeven, Joséphine Bacon
1 h 12