Truly remarkable film produced on a low budget in Quebec by Albéric Aurtenèche, Contemplation of mystery resembles the small UFO in our cinematography by the originality of its form, the multitude of its references and its appeal to existential vertigo.
Alberic Aurtenèche, a filmmaker of French origin raised here in a community of expatriates from France, offers with this first feature film a fascinating example of what an artist familiar with other cultural codes can breathe into our imaginary, by mixing its sources with ours. The luminous beast by Pierre Perrault is not far away. Time for a hunt by Francis Mankiewicz either, where this ritualized sport was a passage to adulthood. The forest landscapes are very Quebecois, the performers too. This theme of the search for the father, through a return to the fold, already haunted our national cinematography.
But the film feeds nonetheless elsewhere. His metaphysical quest stuck to medieval or older initiatory stories – the filmmaker also refers to Metamorphosis of Ovid and the Greco-Roman myth of Actaeon – goes through a series of tests to discover a kind of Grail linked here to the rituals of the hunt. On the trail of the Monarque, a mythical stag, are launched the Knights of Saint-Hubert, hunters with secret codes and fierce customs. Old grimoires preserve mysteries. Sound effects, music, those of hunting horns among others, lighting in the woods, inspired framing, open the doors to a parallel world strewn with traps.
The film is entirely constructed as an interior journey: that of Éloi Cournoyer (Emmanuel Schwartz, all in a figure of dumbfounded transparency), back to the fictitious village of Saint-Ignace for a ritual ceremony one year after the terrible death of his father. hunter in forest. And in the paternal camp with the facade covered with plumes, this man, too lucid, haunted by the desire for death, will cross the mirror to surpass himself and find his strength.
A Diana the huntress (Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse), human, but a cruel goddess who deceives and attracts, haunts her daily life and makes it branch off.
The cast is exceptional, with Gilles Renaud as Grand Commander of the Order, François Papineau as the damned soul of the Knights of Saint-Hubert and Martin Dubreuil as a devious disabled companion, who sows the tracks. Through him, the hero will find out that his father was hiding secrets and everyone wants to bamboozle him. A man of the woods, wrongly nicknamed the Indian (Reda Guerinik) by the right-thinking of this brotherhood, appears omnipresent, but absent with his silence, his bow with occult powers and his obscure designs.
Thriller Transcendental straddling several genres, this film explores, through Ian Lagarde’s lighted camera and a disturbing and offbeat staging, new and old ways. The consumption of ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic Amazonian decoction (DMT), draws the story in its spiraling heart towards initiatory visions, translated with supernatural effects by the experimental filmmaker Alexandre Larose.
Contemplation of the mystery is too esoteric to please everyone, but those who enter the cryptic universe of Alberic Aurtenèche will savor its stolen springs with real delight. This first feature film is more than a promise, it is the milestone of a filmmaker’s career that we expect to be radiant.