Montréal vu par... is a collage of six short films with the only connection between them being the enigmatic city of Montréal. This is a pristine collaboration of six of Canada's most prominent and talented directors. Through different perspectives the city is shown as beautiful, awkward, majestic, foreign, familiar, historic, humane, local and international.
The directors explore themes and style with mixed results. The quality of the work is, as often case with these types of projects, unfortunately uneven. But what is constant is the will of each director to explore and advance his or her art. A fare share of novelty can be seen from each one of them as they try new things in regard with visuals, editing, camerawork or storytelling. This avant-garde approach enables the viewer to be the witness of evolving art.
The first segment ("Desperanto") caught me completely by surprise with its quirkiness and originality. Patricia Rozema, best known for her beautiful period-piece-with-an-edge, Mansfield Park, takes the simple story of a Toronto woman dying to have fun in Montréal to a hilarious, bizarre and very effective swirl into the drunken delusion of a party.
The second segment ("La Toile du temps") is quite interesting with the follow-up of an object through time and a weird video background that communicates behind the scene. A bit dry, but original.
The third and fourth part really didn't have much in it for me unfortunately. Not bad, but nothing special either.
Now for the dessert...
The fifth segment ("Rispondetemi") is Léa Pool at her most poetic and visually stunning. With gorgeous shots of Montréal as seen from an ambulance racing through the city. The passion, tension, love and contemplation of the life and death situation all mesh together perfectly in this short but intense short piece. (I considered buying the DVD just for this part)
The sixth part ("Vue d'ailleurs") is really the icing on the cake. It is both hilarious (Rémy Girard at his best) and touching. This closing segment of the sextet also manages to put Montréal in an international perspective. The core of the tale however is a personal story told to an attentive audience, but really to the viewer across the screen. We are privy to an all-out confession of an elderly woman of a love affair she had ages ago, while still with her husband. We are plunged into her story and feel every passion, lust, love, regret (?), and relief of finally telling the unspoken tale. This reminiscence/purging of the soul comes across very fluently and we are almost sorry that Denys Arcand (Academy Award favourite)'s finesse is compacted in a short film and not a full blown feature. This is in my opinion, Montréal brainchild, Denys Arcand's best ever captured on film.
As a whole, not an earth-shattering project, but a lot of beauty and diversity to be found. If not strong enough to hold as a coherent whole, its different parts will surely reach you one way or the other.
