Science fiction and comedy don’t always mix well in the cinema. With vikingsound 4e feature film, filmmaker Stéphane Lafleur has succeeded in brilliantly marrying the two genres to create a most successful offbeat comedy.
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We missed Stéphane Lafleur. After directing three singular first feature films endowed with a very strong author’s signature (Continental, a film without a gun, On familiar ground and You sleep Nicole), the filmmaker made us wait for eight years before coming back with this tasty 4e opus, certainly his best and his most accessible to date.
The scenario of viking (which Lafleur co-wrote with Éric K. Boulianne) is based on a totally original idea that surprises from the outset. We follow the path of David, a physical education teacher who volunteers to collaborate on a manned mission on March.
With four other Quebec volunteers, David will be called upon to form a B team of alter egos of the five American astronauts sent to Mars. Having been chosen because they each have similar psychological profiles to their American counterparts, our five fake astronauts will have to go through a simulation of the Mars mission, isolated in a hidden bunker in the middle of a desert in the United States. . The goal? Attempt to anticipate and solve from a distance the interpersonal problems encountered in space by real astronauts.
At the end of the dream
Stéphane Lafleur and Éric K. Boulianne could easily have gotten lost in venturing into writing a screenplay based on such a rich and ambitious concept. But the two accomplices were able to maintain a certain authenticity in their story by remaining glued to these deeply human characters.
Staged with surgical precision by Lafleur, viking multiplies the absurd and delusional situations, distilling a fine and joyfully quirky humor.
In addition to its irresistible humor, its overflowing imagination and its touching reflection on the need to go after one’s dreams, the film also amazes visually thanks in particular to the sublime and often poetic images of cinematographer Sara Mishara (drunken birds). To sum it up simply: viking is a great success.
A film by Stéphane Lafleur
With Steve Laplante, Larissa Corriveau, Fabiola N. Aladdin, Hamza Haq and Denis Houle. Showing Friday