When he has just been left by his girlfriend, Sam mysteriously loses consciousness. When he wakes up, he hears strange noises that could be of extraterrestrial origin.
Science fiction films are rare in Quebec. Especially minimalist and experimental films like space mistralwhich seem to come from another planet.
This unidentified cinematographic object is the first feature film by Marc-Antoine Lemire, who in the past proposed the excellent short Pre Drink. The director uses genre cinema as a metaphor for separation and mourning in love. His abandoned and insomniac hero gradually loses contact with reality, letting himself be guided by his hallucinations.
They are expressed by a rich work on the form. The story, divided into three acts, espouses the disarray and loneliness of its protagonist. The ratio of the image first seems to suffocate it before gradually expanding as it recovers its freedom. The photography is in black and white during its relapses, regaining its colors when its wounds heal. Then there is all the sound coating which confers a singular climate of strangeness.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MEDUSA FILMS
movie scene space mistral
Too bad that such care was not given to the script. The tenuous script would probably have been better suited to a medium-length film. The effort tries so hard to be bizarre and original that it becomes almost opaque. For a few poetic moments – this superimposition of personal memories that act like ghosts or these musical waves that echo Close Encounters of the Third Kind –, there are others more repetitive, with a disturbing cat or uneven actors who try to bring a humor that often falls into the water.
The whole holds the road until the last act. A stay in nature in a healing center that turns into delirium and big nonsense. This includes a rave of individuals disguised as animals and an animated passage against a backdrop of psychotropic drugs and sexual symbols. Once there, the film becomes a trip between friends which would undoubtedly have had its hour of glory in a crowded room of Fantasia.
A stunning end to a playful and marginal work which, if not conclusive, gives a glimpse of the creative madness that drives its author. The best is still to come.
Indoors
science fiction
space mistral
Marc Antoine Lemire
With Samuel Brassard, Catherine-Audrey Lachapelle, Alex Trahan
1:43 a.m.