À corps perdu

An attractive, happy ménage-a-trois in Montreal abruptly splits up, leaving burned-out photojournalist Matthias Habich the odd lover out, adding a burden of personal disillusionment to his already overwhelming load of professional guilt. Quebec filmmaker Léa Pool certainly shows a flair for dramatic gestures, and her film is often more fragmented than its protagonist, sometimes to stunning effect. Mirrors are shattered, children in Third-World villages are shot, heartbeats pound on the soundtrack (there's an unfortunate tendency to overwork the bombastic synthesizer score), and the stark black and white photographs supposedly taken by Habich while on assignment (and meant to illustrate his inner anguish) almost overpower the simple human drama in the foreground. But once the story zeroes in on Habich's moral crisis (and his bittersweet affair with a deaf-mute window washer) it coheres into an absorbing study of a man disengaged from the world around him, with all the jarring flashbacks and portentous visual tricks balanced against moments of surprising tenderness and sensitivity. Only the generic English language title ('Straight to the Heart') is a liability.

This very independent film is one I loved from the first minute. The main character is a middle-aged photo-journalist who returns from Central America to find his roommates/lovers gone, and is about the process of grieving and healing losses, and the difficulty of being professionally successful while your personal life is falling apart. I call this a French Canadian art film; it is ballet-like in its grace and balance, all aspects of the film work together well, and the intelligence of the script and acting never preaches or forces itself on the viewer. For some, this movie will be an emotional cleanser. Powerful. Note: film is black and white. With excellent original music and selections of Vivaldi Stabat Mater sung by James Bowman.

Montreal -80s. A Pulitzer-winning reporter comes back home to Montreal, profoundly shocked by the horrors he has seen in Central America and doubting the values of a job that is powerless to change the realities it witnesses. The only thing that kept him afloat through this ordeal was the idea of home, and the man and the woman whom he loves dearly and with whom he has been sharing his life for the last 10 years. But they are gone. 'At the beginning, explains the man, we were three even when you were not physically here. Then we realized that we were two even when you were actually with us'. The reporter then starts a photographic report on his city. Click click click, each photo shows us an aspect of Montreal, a mood of the photographer, who goes deeper and deeper in the city, in his own heart, until he finds himself… Profoundly genuine and moving, this double journey within a city and within a man's soul using still photographs is a fantastic idea. A great movie.