De l'amour et des restes humains

This is a lovely film. I always tell my friends that this is a gentle sex farce. It's not. I keep on forgetting that Love and Human Remains is a brooding, dark movie, full of smart lines, a great looking cast and a lot of intriguing ideas. There's also one of the more spurious serial killer plots of all time. Frankly, there's really only one suspect, and the whole serial-killing as metaphor for moral despair/AIDS is both trite and already dated. So frankly, forget the serial killer aspect of the plot. Watch this film instead for the great way it develops characters - the endearingly heartless gay waiter who's so bored he prefers waiting tables to acting. and the book reviewer who doesn't like leaving her room. There are some lovely scenes, and some cracking lines of quotable dialogue ("Hi Honey, I'm homo!") that make the film a lot more memorable and endearing than it appears. It does Canada no favours though.

There is, as many reviews have observed, a strong dark streak to this movie. The director it most recalls to me is John Landis (yeah, go ahead and howl about what a peasant I am). Arcand has the gift of exploring frivolous things in a bleak, gray kind of way, then turning round and exploring the horrors of life with a lighthearted touch.

The cast is, without exception, above average. Thomas Gibson, as David, is outstanding as the moody and self-deceptive center around whom the rest of the characters revolve. He talks a good nihilist, but his actions reflect more love in his character than he is willing to acknowledge. Gibson was already a strong and subtle actor in 1993. It was difficult to look at him and see Greg Montgomery, let alone Agent Hotchner of Criminal Minds.

Perhaps not the best scene, but the one I enjoy most, my "rewind scene," is the section where Candy is expecting a visitor, and one uninvited person after another shows up at the door. As Candy's interpersonal environment swings further and further out of control, David just grows bouncier, perkier, and more enthusiastic, like a gaunt Gen-X "Tigger."

Quirky, brilliant, twisted, dark, inventive, unnerving. This is a wonderful film, extremely well acted and smoothly directed. Moody and atmospheric, death stalks this mixed assortment of oddball lovers, both inside and out. Yet it is not a bleak tale of destruction, but a story of redemption, survival, and finally love. A great job by everybody involved. Top marks!

Yes, this film has many gay characters. It also has straight characters, characters who are not sure about their sexuality, people who are searching for some truth about their existence.

This is not a film about sexual orientation. It's about loneliness and the difficulty human beings often experience in connecting to one another. Filmically, Denys Arcand cleverly balances the various dimensions of the relationships and the contrasting, constantly shifting relationships. The serial killer element is a bit less successful (it feels more like a way to wrap up various plot points and, unlike the rest of the film, is thematically heavy-handed).

Thomas Gibson centers and grounds the film; it's a quiet performance but behind the handsome, arrogant exterior he slowly reveals a terrified soul afraid of showing or accepting love from those around him. The supporting cast is strong, especially Mia Kirshner as Gibson's friend, a dom-for-hire with precognitive powers. Her role is more metaphor than a literal conceit---strangely innocent and depraved at the same time, she represents the light and dark of the characters' sexual consciousness.

The film's involving and often surprises in its character development. The effect is somewhat like Robert Altman directing a David Mamet script---the dialogue doesn't shrink from some searing observations aside from a few contrived moments in the beginning. Often, in our search for love and a conventional "relationship", we ignore the love that already exists around us---in our friends, family, those who are able to see us as we are. Arcand and the writer, Brad Fraser, make some canny observations on the different ways human beings try to escape and deny their loneliness and how that denial returns to haunt us in so many unexpected ways.

This film is a rewarding experience. It may not be for bigots who can't get past the sexual orientation of some of the characters to see the greater, transcendental message of hope and redemption. Loneliness is a universal experience. A film like this, that dares to explore the darker side of our lives with a clever and perceptive eye, deserves applause and an open-minded approach.

I bought this film from my local blockbuster for 99p an it's been sitting in my video bookcase for at least a year now. Then tonight I decided to see it, the film was quite different to what I had expected and I didn't find any humour in it all I saw was that it was a bleak look at people dealing with love relationships and sexual orientation and I didn't really see the psycho killer plot really having a point except to add tension to the end of the film. I felt that the person playing the lesbian woman did a great job. I was following her emotions and what happened around her. Some people would probably have seen some of the stuff that she does as funny but I could really put myself in her place, loving someone but them rejecting you at every turn no matter how hard you try. I thought it was a very moving film and dealt with all the different sexualities well. I was expecting something like Bound & Gagged : A love story, but this is a very different film. Not for bigots.