It looks like a large disused hospital with a chapel. Through evocative fixed shots, we visit this decaying space now inhabited solely by noise. Mechanical rumor emanating from some off-camera equipment, howling of the wind… But then footsteps are heard and a young woman arrives in the frame. She is the mysterious guardian of the place – unless she is its prisoner? – In Miss Kenopsia, the enigmatic fifteenth feature film by Denis Côté, presented at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) after shining at the Locarno Festival. Exclusively, the filmmaker was kind enough to give us some of the keys, but not all, for which we are grateful.
Indeed, Miss Kenopsia is a film whose inherent opacity is a source of fascination rather than frustration. In other words, it’s cinematic happiness in concentrated form (barely 75 minutes).
“I’m still looking for the origins of this film: it happened so quickly,” confides the director of Curling.
“At first, I had thought of shooting a film at the L’Amour cinema, at night, without anyone; something in the vein of Hello, Dragon Inn, by Tsai Ming-liang. But the meeting with the owner was very bad. I also think that there are vestiges of the pandemic in the film: we had just experienced two or three traumatic years, always inhabiting the same spaces…”
After a short silence, Denis Côté continues: “I am also certain that my illness, my state of health, led me to this project. The pandemic was ending, but I continued with the illness…”
You should know that Denis Côté has suffered from kidney failure, a degenerative disease, for thirteen years. A few days after our interview ahead of TIFF, he was scheduled to receive a kidney transplant. In this regard, when we mention the adjective “prolific”, which we readily attach to him, the filmmaker mentions an “urgency to create” which is not unrelated to the precariousness of his health.
The atmosphere of reality
In Miss Kenopsia, throughout, the protagonist speaks about the notion of time, even as we come to wonder whether the visitors she encounters from room to room are real, imaginary, or supernatural. For the record, could it be that the heroine is herself a ghost?
In an allusive, oblique way, the film leans towards the fantastic, through unusual sounds and unexplained light projections. This is not a first for the filmmaker, who grew up watching horror films, as he liked to recall during his former life as a film critic and columnist for the now defunct weekly HERE : as evidenced by his collection Critical notebook.
“It stays with me, but it evolves. I’m still resisting: I don’t want to make a horror film straight real zombies or real ghosts. But I’m still having fun with it, that’s for sure. »
However, in this matter, reality turned out to be even stranger than fiction, as the filmmaker reveals.
“One of the filming locations was the former monastery of the Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood, in Saint-Hyacinthe. In 2018, when it closed, it was a hair’s breadth from becoming a cult. They got up at night to go and do penance in a room that was used for that. Above the doors, there were drops of blood drawn with paint, or sometimes real blood… When you shoot in a place like that, you want it, you don’t want it, there’s an atmosphere. »
Another of the main filming locations was the Royal Victoria, a now disused hospital. There too, there was an atmosphere which contaminated, if you like, that of the film.
“The gentleman who showed me around told me: “We don’t like the eighth floor.” He was a man over seven feet tall, and he looked like he was scared. He explained to me that, for fifty years, employees had the right to sign a waiver so as not to work an eighth shift. He mentioned a smell that was impossible to get rid of. “You’ll see, it smells like a corpse,” he told me. »
It was the maternity floor, continues Denis Côté, and several women died there while giving birth… before then reappearing in fleeting spectral visions.
“Throughout the years there have been all kinds of stories. The part of the filming at the Royal Vic was only done on the eighth floor. And without me foreseeing it, it irrigated the film. »
A film that Denis Côté initially envisaged was more abstract: “I had written snippets of dialogue for this character who is perhaps not one, who is perhaps a alter ego…I thought I would only use it in 10% of the film. Larisa [Corriveau] arrived, with its kind of vibes amazing… “
The actress’ participation grew exponentially and, with it, the impression of a story, or finally, of a “quasi-story”. In such a way that Miss Kenopsia is located at the junction of the two dominant currents in Côté’s work, the experimental and the narrative. Here and there, we find ourselves thinking about Bestiarythen to Directory of disappeared townswhich revealed Larissa Corriveau.
Anxiety melancholy
By the way, why this curious surname for the title role? The word “kenopsia” is in this case a neologism.
“John Koenig, an American poet, wrote this work, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which he filled with invented words to describe feelings for which we have no words. Kenopsia describes the feeling you get when you enter a place that once buzzed with life, but is now deserted. Your brain tells you that it should be teeming with people, but there’s no one there, and that leaves you with a note of melancholy, or a slight anxiety. »
The film also invokes the virtual phenomenon of backroomsas the director notes.
“He’s my director of photography [Vincent Biron] who pointed it out to me: these are kids who walk around empty places that they film, and they put it on YouTube, and it’s seen 2 or 3 million times. Young people are blind to these videos which are neither horror nor narrative. Young people who no longer watch TV watch this instead, “boosting” themselves with melancholy and anxiety. I didn’t know that, but my film seems like a response to that. »
For the record, Denis Côté does not overanalyze himself during the creative period.
“It’s things that you find, it’s pieces that you put together, and it becomes a patchwork. In the end, does it say anything? »
Denis Côté asks this question, but refuses to answer it, because, according to him: “A film like that is as if it came out of the ground by itself. I would be lying if I told you that I imagined it all and planned it like that for such a specific purpose. »
In short, Miss Kenopsia is the kind of film that returns to the public what the latter projects there, in a host of possible readings. It’s a work that we want to discuss.
Precisely, in Critical notebook again, we can read from the pen of Denis Côté: “It is when we give him the opportunity to talk about his favorite filmmakers that the film critic is truly happy. »
It couldn’t be more true. And it turns out that we could talk for hours without getting tired of — and with — Denis Côté.
The film Miss Kenopsia will be on display in Quebec around the beginning of 2024.