Mars et Avril

Embarrassingly bad, especially for a Quebecois film with Robert Lepage. Flat, uninteresting characters, weak story, weak and simple dialogue masquerading as profound, no plot to speak of...looks a lot of attention was paid to the bartenders' outfits, though....

I realize making a sci-fi on a limited budget is an immense challenge, but this seems like someone's vanity project; maybe they should have tried a short film to start.

And for a film with the main focus on music and musicians, it's a totally unremarkable, forgettable score.

Sometimes films remain obscure and off-the-radar for a good reason!! Pass, unless you're looking for s "hoot-fest"....

It was luck that led me to discover this movie, a few years ago, as if it came to me in a strange way. I approached it without expecting anything, only driven by my curiosity for Quebec science-fiction cinema. What a confusing and beautiful experience it is to dive into the universe of Mars et Avril.

This first feature film from director Martin Villeneuve is a dreamy and poetic experience, juggling with so many philosophical and artistic references without ever falling into the free quote. It is easy to feel the deep love the director has for science fiction cinema and Franco-Belgian comics and there is something very touching about it, as he managed to work with the legendary François Schuiten (The Dark Cities).

It is certain that this film will not appeal to everyone, because it is a contemplative experience, which does not give the viewer all the keys to understanding, but if you let yourself be carried away by its strange and dreamy atmosphere, the experience will be wonderful.

What is really amazing about Mars et Avril is the fact that Martin Villeneuve and his teams managed to create such a visually impressive production with only 2.3 millions USD's budget. This great tour-de-force led him to the TED scene to talk about the creative process.

I highly recommend watching this first great Quebec science fiction film. Mars et Avril is rich, intriguing, fascinating and refreshingly poetic !

I extremely enjoyed this movie. I personally do not like slow rhythm movies but I confess I didn't even forward a second. The actors were great the concepts and symbolism all over the movie scenes challenged my mind to think more deeper. The story connected love,music and infinity together. The only lame part was that elevator. it could be sth else. It was more cooler that that girl only existed in Jacob's dream and he could bring her back to reality. It is one of the few movies that show consciousness as a whole new world yet not fully discovered by human. I strongly recommend this movie. I am not an expert to criticize the movie but in general it was a really nice effort and i don't get why its ranking is not over7.

that view from the top of the stairs that looked like an infinite spiral was amazing. The ending can be interpreted in many ways. I want to accept that Avril stays alive in real world but there is also the possibility that the real reality was that one Jacob traveled to at the end so he dies and leaves the virtual reality.

Yes, this is not a perfect movie, I didn't give 10 stars for achievement. I gave it for pure directing talent. You need to understand Quebec's movie industry. The mainstream movies here benefit heavily from financial government support. Mainstream movies here have average scenarios at best, and most of the time the acting is theatrical when it's not sub par. Even with some of the best paid actors here in the french province. Probably it's all under the influence of a group of people who don't really care about passion and quality.

Not so with this particular picture. Compared with the rest of the local productions, this film is pure bliss. Actually, without being partisan, this picture reminds of one of the best Quebec's directors, Robert Lepage. He also has a role in the film. Actually, Lepage is a genius born at the wrong place where he doesn't receive the deserved recognition. Will Martin Villeneuve be luckier?

I saw this sci-fi film at the Mill Valley Festival when it came out, watched it again recently on Amazon and thought it was refreshing, poetic, inspiring, intelligent and highly imaginative. A living comic book that doesn't take itself too seriously, or a modern Georges Méliès' film, a futuristic, steam-punk audiovisual feast! It's an amazing accomplishment and you can see that the filmmaker put a whole lot of love in every frame. Everything about it is different from the regular type of films that are out there and it has some rather unusual ideas about the soul and person that completes us. At its core, it's a love story, a poetic tale, a dream on celluloid. To me, this film is of the same genre as those of two favourite filmmakers of mine: Terry Gilliam and Luc Besson.

I can't say enough what an incredible feat in filmmaking I think "Mars & Avril" is. It's stunningly beautiful and haunting, and like nothing I've ever seen. I grew up reading Carl Sagan so I'm an easy target for themes of spiritualism and space. His point was always that humanism and astrophysics aren't mutually exclusive, and this film says this in a very unique way. I'm really amazed at how completely the filmmaker realized this future culture, down to the architecture, fashion and music. The way he conceived the idea of music in the future, informed by and informing physics and science as we know it; the evolution of musical instruments and sounds; the cosmic, almost religious implications of music that have taken hold in this future society; it was all so beautifully imagined. The way he took science fiction and used it not to create wild action sequences and wars, but an emotional love story, really changed the way I now think about the genre.

Heavily relying on green screens, "Mars & Avril" is set in a futuristic Montreal, a place that greatly resembles "Blade Runner"'s Los Angeles or "The Fifth Element"'s NYC, a dreamy future city reminiscent of comics anthology 'Metal Hurlant', yet with something new. On a purely aural and visual level, I wouldn't hesitate to call this film visionary. Some of the images made me feel transported to the furthest depths of an alien realm. It's a mirror, a tilted cheval glass, a digital reflection of a damaged dimension, surreal and moving. For English-speaking audiences, I found watching the film with subtitles actually enhanced the French and Belgian-inspired "bande dessinée" aspect of it, so it didn't bug me at all. Worth watching more than once to catch all the subtleties of the plot and visual details.

What's most incredible is that the director, Martin Villeneuve (yes, Denis Villeneuve's younger brother), managed to achieve such a quality with a budget of only 2 million... and it was his first feature! It took him seven years. "How I made an impossible film" is a TED Talk by Martin, also worth watching. His talk details the walls he hit with budget and other creative constraints. But he survived, and so did "Mars & Avril", thankfully. I can't wait to see his next films! In my opinion, this one deserves a wider distribution (including a Blu-Ray, please!) and to score above 8 on IMDb. This little gem of a film will be rediscovered once the director has made his first Hollywood hit.

For the record, it's worth mentioning that Martin did "violence-free, philosophical sci-fi" with "Mars & Avril" four years before his older brother Denis did with "Arrival", and for 25 times less money, stretching each dollar to unbelievable heights. And for all those wowed by Denis' "Blade Runner 2049", I highly recommend his younger brother's equally mind-blowing sci-fi epic "Mars & Avril".