Bretten Hannam had already won our membership with all his enthusiasm thanks to his short film Wildfire. The director micmac persists and signs with this extension of Wildfirethis time called Wildhood.
We find Lincoln (Phillip Lewitski) and his little brother Travis (Avery Winters-Anthony), two lost kids whose only landmark in life is the violence of their father, with whom they live alone in a slum. Without it being said and even less seen, we suspect that the bandage on the missing eye of the very young Travis is a trace of “paternal love”. The violence that we see, on the other hand, is that suffered by Lincoln, covered in bruises. Until the teenager stumbles upon proof that his Mi’kmaq mother is not dead, contrary to what his parent may have told him. He then decides to run away with his half-brother to go in search of his mother. On their way, they meet Pasmay (Joshua Odjick), a young Micmac who travels from pow-wow to pow-wow to dance for a few dollars. And by a combination of circumstances, he will become their traveling companion on this initiatory journey.
Multiple quests
This road movie is not a finalist in the Best Original Screenplay category at the Canadian Screen Awards for Nothing (it garners six nominations in all). Wildhood is not satisfied with telling us a single quest, it multiplies and intertwines them. Its hero, Lincoln, is in search of his mother, but also of his Aboriginal origins, his place in society, his sexual identity and his identity in general. In short, a journey that is more like an obstacle course and that hooks us from start to finish.
In the perfect continuity of the short film, Bretten Hannam films this rebellious youth with nuance. Keeping in the background a kind of naive melancholy as Jean-Pierre Jeunet was able to do in The fabulous destiny of Amélie Poulainhe punctuates his feature film by interspersing disillusioned contemplation with peaks of furious frenzy that electrifies us from head to toe.
We will also note with what subtlety the director and screenwriter builds the universe of his film from the two brothers. Each new character, with the exception of the father, only appears in the image at first out of focus, from behind, or without being able to see his face correctly. It is only when they take on a real importance in the journey of Lincoln and Travis that the camera makes them identifiable. It thus visually weighs all the weight of the reduced perception that the two brothers may have of the world and brings us a little closer, if necessary, to their psyche as suspicious as it is tormented.
With the same finesse, the journey between nature and the urban environment shows the fluctuation of the feelings of the characters. While the natural landscapes embody a form of appeasement thanks to a thorough aestheticisation, the traces of human activity, often dilapidated, come to highlight the conflicts which torment the three traveling companions.
Passion and aggressiveness
Already in Wildfire, Hannam made his central character an icon of teenage rebellion, displaying his slingshot behind his red bandana, amid the flames. For the long version of his short, the director pushes even further this figure overflowing with insolence. Lincoln, with his freshly bleached hair, bare chest, bruised bruises, snarl on his face, looks like Tyler Durden oozing sweat and blood in fight club. The charisma of the actor, Phillip Lewitski, has a lot to do with it. He interprets this ball of anger which reveals itself with suspicion, without the slightest false note. The complex character of Lincoln that he embodies, in perpetual conflict with his father, his origins, his homosexuality and himself, thus brings the verve of youth to peaks of energy.