Smart Tanning | Identity | The Press

The sunny days are perfect for relaxing, but there’s no need to put your brain on vacation. Here are four suggestions from our columnists for entertaining and thinking in the sun, one theme at a time. This week, identity.

Stories of love and autism

A docuseries that follows singles looking for love? Let’s just say I was reluctantly getting into this Netflix offering. Except that here, the protagonists are all on the autism spectrum. And that changes everything. Because the classic codes of seduction that we’ve seen thousands of times deployed on screen collapse to make way for attempts that are often clumsy and awkward, sometimes downright bizarre, but always endearing. It’s human and funny, surprising and instructive, and we grow fond of Steve, Abbey, Kaelynn and the others – people who, like everyone else, only aspire to love and be loved.

Philippe Mercure, The Press

Stories of love and autisma series co-created by Cian O’Clery. Broadcast on Netflix.

Watch the trailer

Gamma rays

The film Gamma raysby Henry Bernadet, did not receive the recognition or the theatrical distribution it deserved. This three-part fresco tells the stories of Abdel, Fatima and Toussaint, three teenagers from immigrant families who are looking for their place in Montreal. The story is inspired by real-life stories experienced by students at a high school in the Saint-Michel district. Although the script contains some clumsiness, the young actors, all non-professionals, are moving. And the Montreal summer is magnificent in the director’s eye.

Alexander Pratt, The Press

Gamma raysby Henry Bernadet, with Chaimaa Zinedine, Chris Kanyembuga and Yassine Jabrane. Available for rental on demand on several platforms.

Watch the trailer

The Identity Trap

With The Identity Trapis a fine, critical and calm analysis of woke ideology offered by the American-German political scientist Yascha Mounk – although he does not use this expression, since “today, anyone who calls an activist ‘woke’ risks being instantly perceived as an old reactionary”. The ideology exists, nevertheless. Attractive to a certain left eager to fight injustices, it constitutes a trap in the eyes of the author, because it risks walling us up in our respective identities. And it is not an “old reactionary” who writes it: Mounk’s last two works have sounded the alarm on the rise of the populist right in the world.

Isabelle Hachey, The Press

The Identity Trapby Yascha Mounk, Observatoire editions, 558 pages

The Tolstoyevsky Enigma

In its most militant form, political discourse on identities pigeonholes each group. Identities are clear and fixed, with lines of demarcation that serve to unite those who share grievances and demands. In The Tolstoyevsky EnigmaPierre Bayard shows that another vision of identity, more literary and fluid, is possible. The inventive essayist enjoys amalgamating the works of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy as if they came from a single writer, Tolstoyevsky. His thesis: the works of this author show that each being is multiple. Several conflicting identities coexist within each one. The presentation is original and brilliant. Bayard illuminates these monuments of Russian literature while deepening our understanding of identity.

Paul Journet, The Press

The Tolstoyevsky Enigmaby Pierre Bayard, Les éditions de Minuit, 166 pages