L'ange de goudron

Tar Angel is a surprisingly engaging little Canadian movie that I've never heard of before, yet I am usually up to date on these things.

An Algierian family are all set for the final step to becoming full fledged Canadians when all of a sudden, the son they thought they knew, turns out to have plenty of secrets up his sleeve. His father, in a desperate race to save his son, has to figure out which is more important.. His son, or his citizenship? So the father and his son's girlfriend take a Northern Quebec tour (woo fun) to find him and figure out what he's up to, which leads to a somewhat harsh conclusion.

Everything about this movie is great. The acting is surprisingly excellent, and is quite well done. The only big problem I had with this movie, is that there is this big hole in the middle, when the father and the son's girlfriend go off to try to find him, the subplot, if that is indeed what it was, was there to kill time, as the story suddenly drags, but once they do find him, it immediately picks up again.

Aside from that, and some minor plot holes that the script-writer was hoping you wouldn't find, this movie is a pretty good watching.

An Algerian immigrant, few days before receiving his papers to become a Canadian citizen finds out that his 19 years old son has erased all the data from government offices, as a terrorist action, and has disappeared somewhere in Northern Quebec.

With Huguette (his son's girlfriend, a tattoo artist), he leaves in a truck, "borrowed" to his former employer, for the Temiscamingue region where they try to convince this 19 years old revolutionnary not to destroy, with twenty guys, a bunch of passports.

Even if the terrorist underscore of the film sounds weak, it is a great motor of emotions beautifully delivered by the actors. Anger, compassion, love, all leading to a very touching - tear-pulling - ending for the movie, on an almost caricatural national anthem sung by immigrants.

This film is at the image of the new Québec cinema, new faces, new themes, new realities, a new form for the poetic languages, with it's strengths and weaknesses, with a great sense of reality, leaving enough space for the mind to travel.

One scene of the film shows a plane full of illegal immigrants that are being deported. Where is this plane supposed to land, as the people seem to be from everywhere: Asians, Africans, Arabs, etc. So one must wonder whether the plane is supposed to hop from continent to continent, discharging people along the way!

I have heard of a ''secret'' airport, formerly an airbase, in La Macaza, Quebec, serving for such a purpose. This might be an unfounded rumour, but sometimes rumours are based on reality. That doesn't change the fact that if such a plane were to take off with such a diverse group of people, it could not land in just one place.