Exasperated by the bickering between her parents, a 12-year-old scheming with her friends to get them to divorce.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
With her first feature film, director Sandrine Brodeur-Desrosiers is addressing an audience often overlooked by Quebec cinema in recent years: pre-teens. Set apart The 3D Peewee – The winter that changed my life, The Outlaw Gang and Aurélie Laflamme’s diary, what recent films were specifically aimed at them? We continue to search.
It is therefore very refreshing to see the arrival in theaters No chicane in my cabin. The director, awarded in Berlin in 2019 for her short film just me and youand its co-screenwriter, Maryse Latendresse, achieve a real balancing act by offering a story that is neither too childish nor too mature.
Many elements will also inspire young people aged 9 to 12 in search of greater autonomy: secret meetings in a cabin, a pizza fight (with ketchup!), spy sessions or even visits nocturnal without the knowledge of the parents (long live the windows and the ladders).
One scene particularly symbolizes the self-affirmation that marks the passage from childhood to adolescence: that of the court during the end-of-year show. Tired of hearing her father (Pierre-Luc Brillant) and her mother (Isabelle Blais) argue, Justine (Charlotte St-Martin) wants to see them separate. Her suggestion being declined by the main interested parties, she decides to take justice into her own hands by organizing the trial of her parents with the help of four friends.
This moment when Justine reveals her sadness in front of the students and parents of the school is both moving and very powerful. We also feel throughout the film this concern of Sandrine Brodeur-Desrosiers to give voice to young people, in particular by making them masters of a subject on which, in reality, they are rarely allowed to express themselves. How many children have had a say when their parents separated? Certainly not the majority.
To do this, the director can count on actors who we have rarely seen on our screens and who have known how to appropriate their characters (Liam Patenaude, Charlie Fortier, Simone Laperle and Louka Amadeo Bélanger-Leos). In the main role, Charlotte St-Martin stands out, accurately playing this determined, go-getter, but also fragile young girl.
If divorce is a serious subject, the subject of this good family entertainment is neither depressing nor preachy. Above all, we feel the desire to advocate better communication between parents and children, both on the big screen and in everyday life. And this, whether the families are nuclear, single-parent or blended.
Drama
No chicane in my cabin!
Sandrine Brodeur-Desrosiers
With Charlotte St-Martin, Liam Patenaude, Charlie Fortier, Isabelle Blais and Pierre-Luc Brillant
1 h 23 Indoors