La donation

This film was at least partly inspired by an old classic of shorts stories of death. We have an old doctor preparing his own by recruiting a younger one. We have the patients having to deal with their issues. The whole is well wrapped in a story about moving to the small isolated town in north-west Québec where winters are long and summers are short. There is the potential love interest. There is the philosophical reason of existing. All the takes are taken to feel like we would if we'd be there. A bit lonely, a bit isolated, at our own mercy. The story progresses without rushing and without getting bored as we learn something all along. It's cold, it's spartan, it's a life out of the city.

A very unassuming, quiet work of art. Absolutely gorgeous. The "new" doctor shows little emotion in her face, but you very vividly feel the emotion you know she is feeling inside.

The "old" doctor shows his feelings more readily, but only because he has grown to call the small town home.

A very beautiful glimpse into two beings as they ingest and feel their way through. The flow is slow, deliberate, and effortless.

Without spoilers, I did find one thing troubling. The "new" doctor's interactions and point of view, in relation to the father who "skipped town" seemed quite out of character for someone who is trained in Psychology as part of their medical training. Lower forms obviously would take her view, but for the doctor to do it, seemed completely out of character for a mature, educated woman. I found myself wincing, "what...?"

La Donation has received a lukewarm reception from some urban reviewers, but also has garnered several international awards. It's a cultural issue; to understand it, one must be sympathetic to the urban-rural divide. Knowing something of remote northern Canadian life also helps. (Contrary to a review on this site, the issue of the Canadian public health care system is peripheral here. Poor versus wealthy patients and Canadian-U.S. relations are referenced only for background to fill out the film's take on northern social life.)

The images are often stark: again, if a viewer needs spectacular scenery ("vistas"), you won't find them here. Instead there are rather ordinary shots of lakes, fields, fences and so on that evoke the northern Canadian experience more than any stunning mountain could.

Contrary to urban reviews (e.g. Variety, the Globe and Mail), the movement in this film is not slow. There's plot, and there's tension. Again, if you understand the culture at all it will pull at you: the town where everyone is connected, not always in pretty ways, the beauty of the mundane, the constructed life of a wealthy hermit physically disconnected from himself and his fellow humans, the slow inevitable process of living and dying, working and playing in a small northern town.

There are no answers to any of this, no neatly wrapped conclusions to personal romance or social ills or to the phenomenon of dying northern towns. What is here is a beautiful film focused upon capturing the tone of a small town in northern Quebec. It succeeds majestically.

Élise Guilbault plays the lead role with quiet intensity. The support roles are also handled well and do not caricature the subtleties of rural people.

As one character says in a scene that will stick with me, "J'ai peur." Maybe because of fear or a sense that we're all in this together, there is also charity (the film's theme) in most characters.