Isabel

I knew nothing about the film before I walked in the theatre. It turned out to be a "coming of age" experience. The face of the young Genevieve Bujold was captivating. Then the lovely locations, odd music and even odder characters took over. The movie held me spellbound with a sense of unexplainable, frightening acts about to occur. More than once I was jolted right out of my seat. Even though I didn't begin to comprehend the events in her life, I completely believed in Isabel as a person who could survive a series of random threats. Bujold's performance moved me deeply with beautifully understated moments of fear, confusion and hope. Her director/husband may not know how to tell a story but he can fill the screen with tension, misery and awe. This movie is a time capsule of a girl/woman's torn-apart and put-back-together life.

Genevieve Bujold looks marvelous in the inscrutable "Isabel"; she's like a sprite or a princess waif. Playing a 20-year-old from Montreal who returns to her childhood farm on the Gaspé coast for her mother's funeral, Bujold's Isabel reconnects with what remains of her relatives but is intrigued by a handsome young man who resembles her long-deceased brother. Drama from writer-producer-director Paul Almond (Bujold's then-husband) has melancholy atmospherics to spare and unsettling bursts of sound. The film begins with a flurry of jagged past-and-future edits which, I assume, are supposed to represent Isabel's jumbled thoughts--but nowhere else in the film are the edits this quick. Once Isabel reaches her destination, the pace slows way down. One tends to lose faith early in Almond and the picture (I came to the conclusion several times during the movie that the filmmaker didn't really know what he was doing); however, interest in Bujold and her Isabel never wavers. There's a creeping sense of dread, coupled with Bujold's maybe/maybe not hallucinations plus a looming secret about Isabel's parentage, which grips the viewer, but only for awhile. Almond fails to come up with a strong final act, allowing the film to just dribble away. Georges Dufaux's cinematography is vivid and the supporting performances are casual and relaxed. Bujold's lightly offhand manner is appealing, and her elfin face (accentuated with high fashion makeup) is endlessly fascinating. ** from ****

Isabel, the movie, is kind of boring. The female lead is gorgeous and a decent actress but that is not enough to compensate for the tedious pace and confusing plot. The depiction of the Gaspe part of Quebec is interesting but filmwork is amateur (filled with abrupt 'one-take' cuts and stilted acting) and actually disorienting in parts. Despite some moments of interest, I can not recommend this movie.

Bujold was married to this director at the time, and they made several films together. She plays a young woman who returns from Montreal to the rural Quebec community she was raised in because her mother is dying--though unfortunately she's already passed away by the time her daughter gets there. She sticks around ostensibly to care for a spinster uncle, though he doesn't really seem in need of care mentally or physically. She meets a handsome young newcomer (Mark Strange), who at first vaguely frightens her, then doesn't. She fends off some grabby-handed locals. She sees ghosts, or perhaps specters from her own troubled past here. None of this really goes anywhere.

The prospect of seeing Bujold in a "Repulsion"-type thriller is appealing, because she's almost always a compelling actor...but this movie can't decide whether it wants to be "Repulsion," "Straw Dogs," a ghost story, or what. We get hints that her character may be mentally unstable. Yet that turns out to be sort of a red herring, as does really every plot element in the very sketchy script. There's a sexual/violent assault towards the end that comes out of nowhere, and is so darkly staged you can't really tell what's going on anyway.

For a while the atmosphere is intriguing enough, despite the irritating, then-voguish overuse of jump cuts. But after a while it becomes clear the movie can't/won't develop any of its ideas enough to generate suspense, character insight, or any kind of point to the narrative, and that Bujold alone can't carry the whole undercooked enterprise. One always hopes these obscure, often hard-to-find Canadian features will turn out to be gold. But so frequently it's the case--as here--that they are forgotten because they were conceptually muddled and executed without enough boldness of style to compensate. This is just another theoretically interesting misfire that is ultimately rather tedious and unrewarding to watch.

As a comment on religious repression, familial ostracism, and subliminal incestuous urges, this film might have some value. I'll never forget seeing it in 1968 just when the theater had a new automated system that would raise and lower the curtain in time with the beginning and the end of the movie. On a mid-week night, there were probably only 3 others than myself watching the film. At some point after about one confusing hour, the curtain went down, and the house lights came up. We sat looking at one another in bewilderment. I went out to the lobby and asked the old grouch of a manager if the movie was over. Irritably he asked, "Did it say, 'The End'?" No. He huffed off to the projection booth, came back and said there was one more reel. I returned to my seat. The first ending made more sense than the real one.