Lawrence Côté-Collins likes the marginalized, but she doesn’t always give them presents. So in Bungalowwhere we recognize the motifs (tense behind closed doors, love triangle, underworld) that she had explored in discardedher first feature film, the director literally shows the couple in their thirties, Sarah (Sonia Cordeau, energetic), a fan of decoration shows with a strong character, and Jonathan (Guillaume Cyr, moving ), sweet teenage role-playing fan, with their little dog, Sugar.
From the first images of Bungalow, Grand Jury Prize at the Dieppe Canadian Film Festival, Lawrence Côté-Collins gives an overview of the program. Against a background of organic noises as if an evil entity were inhabiting the premises, the modest Laval residence deploys its most hideous aspects in a succession of static shots: glaucous light, oozing surfaces and filth at will. In short, it is The Fair of Misfortunes revisited by Stephen King, crossbred with nods to reality TV and sprinkled with vulgar humor, which is intended to be dark and caustic.
Written with Alexandre Auger, one of the screenwriters of prank And The Barbarians of La Malbaieby Vincent Biron, here director of photography, Bungalow reveals a rigid series of wide shots, where the characters seem prisoners sometimes of an abusive relationship, sometimes of an inextricable situation. In order to mark the passage of time, we punctuate the whole thing with a shot from above on a pose of nails in the colors of the holidays (National Day, Confederation, Halloween, Christmas), courtesy of Valérie Ducharme, nail artist renowned.
Blindly obeying the social pressure that any self-respecting couple should own a home, maintain a lawn free of dandelions, have children and ostentatiously display their happiness, Sarah and Jonathan purchased a bungalow in poor state, which they are about to renovate. Of course, to the tastes of Madame, who adores showy colors, zebra patterns and all that glitters – we suspect her of having played too much with Bratz dolls. “ living the dream, stie,” she says. But renovating is expensive and, soon, the dream turns into a nightmare.
Rhinestones and trash
After making the wrong decision — there will be many of them during this story of renovations where everything goes from bad to worse — to entrust the bathroom to Steve (Benoît Mauffette), colleague and friend of Jonathan who does not charge anything, the couple calls backing up Josée (Ève Landry), a pro who doesn’t do anything for free. An enterprising entrepreneur, she engages with Sarah in an uncomfortable game of seduction – discomfort is cultivated by the shovel in this anxiety-inducing camera.
As Sarah and Jonathan get into trouble, no one shows empathy for them. Not even Sarah’s parents, Guy (Alain Zouvi) and Marie (Sylvie Léonard), the latter caring more about Sugar than her daughter. Even less the host of Decor à GoGo (Anaïs Favron), who thinks only of dazzling the spectators. As for Cynthia (Geneviève Schmidt), who works at the same candy pink shop as Sarah, she looks like a prophet of doom with her stories without tail or head. As for Jim (Martin Larocque), sleazy owner of the bar 1313, which Jonathan and Steve frequent, he launches gloomy reflections with the cookie-cutter on the consumer society, on the future of the planet and on the generation Y without being asked their opinion.
Strong of the five seasons ofAn almost perfect dinner and the four seasons of VIP design that she created, Lawrence Côté-Collins took pleasure in making a synthesis of the worst decorative ideas she saw there. From apple green to taxi yellow, through blood red and violent purple, each color invading the walls of the home, where glitz is king, threatening to cause retinal detachment. Worse still, in some shots, the colors are so dark that the actors blend into the background.
To take too much care of the kitsch and trashy aesthetics of Bungalow, the filmmaker neglected to cement the narrative riddled with awkward ellipses, filler, falling-flat gags, and a poorly interwoven detective plot. What promised to be a scathing comedy with a social flavor has therefore turned into a big cruel farce that barely makes you smile.