La turbulence des fluides

A beautiful, thought-provoking and sexy film about what happens when a seismologist returns to her home town to investigate the mysterious cessation of the tide.

This movie surprised and intrigued me. I never knew where it was going, but I was satisfied by where it took me. The opening sequence alone (set in Tokyo) was worth the price of admission.

Funny and tragic at the same moment.

I can see why Pascal Bussiere is a star in Quebec. She brings us into her story even as her character holds the world at arm's length. When she began to feel the effects of the tidal disturbance, I felt them too.

I found director Manon Briand articulate and charming when she came to the Vancouver International Film Festival, but by then I had already seen and fallen in love with her movie.

This one is definitely worth watching.

This film has a lot of good things going for it. The cinematography is awesome if too artificial at times. Some of the takes are too clearly references to classic images but still make for a nice overall look. The acting is generally convincing and precise although a few lines drops the ambiance too abruptly.

The plot itself is interesting if taken as an artistic process. Suspension of disbelief helps greatly as it's best to immerse oneself in the overall experience rather than nitpick on details. Quite a few counterfactual errors are to be expected in such situations. In a way, this could have been a great film if some things had been taken out. At times, the viewer is spoon-fed an interpretation of the "poetry" of the film. Letting the art speak for itself would have helped greatly.

For some reason, the same is true of the previews. Simply put, they seem to say too much although it's hard to tell what effect they would have on someone who knows nothing of the movie.

Let's hope that, next time, Manon Briand will let her artistic sense free and not impose it on the viewer.

Well, I probably anticipated something more with this one. Or perhaps something else. Coming from Roger Frappier, producer of Maelstrom, and director Manon Briand (of Cosmos fame), I expected something more along the lines of Denis Villineuve or Andre Turpin. In other words, something New-Wavey, fresh, and arty. You do get something visually lavish, containing some great humour, and a nicely understated performed from Pascal Bussieres. However, you also get some trite sentimentality, poorly constructed religious iconography, and the overall feeling of something poppy and mainstream. There's nothing wrong with that, and I'm sure that this film will do very well with domestic audiences (I'm speaking of Quebec, primarily). But it hardly makes for the challenging, satisfying artistic experience of "Maelstrom" and "Un Crabe dans la Tete." Maybe I'm expecting too much. Or something it was never intended to be.

When I saw the trailer of the movie and read the synopsis, I thought "Wow! This is going to be such a great movie!", but let me tell you I did not get what I was expecting.

The movie is a never-ending circle: at each time there is a new element, it ends up just like the other one before "because it's a movie about the resemblance of love and the tides, the sea" (as Manon Briand said herself in French when I saw her). It was a falsely profound movie, falling into total esotericism.

There were some funny parts, but the movie was not a comedy. The scenery was nice and the quality of the images was good too. The actors were good, but they were playing characters for whom I was unable to develop any kind of sympathy.

I believe this movie will be appreciated by many (and I was already proven that), but I think it's only OK to watch but not great at all.

[Actually, Luc Besson did about nothing in the movie. It was only his studio that helped a bit at realizing the film.]

This beautifully photographed film tells the story of a scientist woman trying to explain an unusual phenomenon taken place in the Saint-Lawrence river in a recluse region of northern Quebec. Her work will take her to a journey she was not expecting which primarily deals with her own private longings. Some may say that the film takes way too long to get to the point which, from that perspective, must be the love story. Others may argue the exact opposite; that the love story is secondary to the natural disaster plot it therefore dilutes. I tend to believe that both stories are moving along at the same rate which is fairly slow and might even be perceived as hesitant. The overall effect is one of a very well done piece of cinema with a powerful dramatic finale but also of an almost lazy script that should have went through a couple more rewrites. In short, an uneven film with still lots of charm.