Anne Émond is used to diving into troubled waters on a dramatic level. One night lovers who bare their hearts in Night #1 (2011) to his kaleidoscopic portrait of Nelly Arcan in Nelly (2016), through his melancholy study of a father adrift in Loved ones (2015), the filmmaker depicts tormented souls in search of answers. Even Young Juliet (2019), this luminous story of emancipation as funny as it is touching about the reality of a suburban teenager, plunged into the twists and turns of the ordinary tragedy of femininity.
We are therefore not surprised that Catherine-Anne Toupin thought of entrusting him with the big screen adaptation of her successful play The pack ; a disturbing story that explores the vicious circle of increasingly omnipresent violence in our speeches and in our ways of life.
With Lucy Grizzly SophieAnne Émond successfully dives into the world of the psychological thriller, happily tapping into the codes of Hitchcockian film noirs and suspense from the 1990s, in addition to evoking the rhythmic and contrasting construction of David Fincher and the sense of punch of an Emerald Fennell.
The film opens with a woman, visibly intoxicated behind the wheel of a luxury car, who appears to be running away from something in the middle of the night. Nervous and afraid, she stops in front of a large house, isolated in the forest, in front of which an offer for a room to rent is posted. Hesitantly, she knocks at the door, where she is greeted by Martin, who, happy to disturb her solitude, invites her to make this house his own in which he resides with his aunt.
From then on, a strange complicity develops between these two broken beings who, over the course of drunken evenings, share confidences, expose their vulnerability and lay themselves – sometimes literally – bare, in a captivating exchange made of fusions and provocations. And yet, in the eye of the spectator, doubt persists and the mystery becomes opaque. Beneath the appearances, are the two friends really who they say they are?
In a production where the form perfectly matches the background, the filmmaker plays with contrasts between darkness and light, fog and sunshine, perceptible unease and great freedom to exacerbate the sinister atmosphere of the house where the majority of the action takes place. . The camera lingers, prolonging the movements and gazes, accompanied by insistent and alarming music which reinforces the suspense and the state of alert.
The essence of the piece is maintained, but the story is fleshed out and takes advantage of all the richness of the cinematographic medium, in particular to reinforce the distressing aspect of the night, as well as the intimacy and the sensations of suffocation that the behind closed doors.
The denouement, of which nothing will be revealed, is therefore built to the rhythm of an extremely effective narrative and formal tension, and can be guessed as it is savored, without shying away from its pleasure. Everything is carried by the exceptional performances of Catherine-Anne Toupin and Guillaume Cyr, who demonstrate a sense of abandon and generosity that is nothing less than admirable.