In 1960s Quebec, Agathe, an asthmatic child with a vivid inner world, grows up in an isolated suburb, lulled by the haunting sounds of a passing night train that spark her longing for an elusive elsewhere. Her mother Thérèse (the remarkable Larissa Corriveau), a secretary by day and artist by night, creates a tender, offbeat daily life with her flamboyant friend Maurice, a fashion designer. As Agathe grows up, she meets Frank (Lennikim), a young writer whose dreams of a Japanese heroine strike a mysterious chord within her. For her directorial debut, the great Marie Brassard crafts a mystical and mesmerizing, visually exquisite tale, where past and future, dream and reality intertwine. Infused with mythological legends, quantum physics, and magical realism, this coming-of-age journey is also a moving exploration of identity and the mysteries of space and time.
Facing a long winter of lockdown and combating a bad case of writer’s block, filmmaker Eric agrees to get a dog with his girlfriend Allie. A modern couple – vegan, ethical, millennial, neurotic – much research and negotiation leads to the arrival of Milly, a rescue from the Dominican Republic. This sets off a riotous chain of new challenges on how to best deal with this addition to the household. As Eric contends with a sinister dog-training programme, his introspection spills out onto his film work, with poor Allie and Milly taken along for the ride. The couple each pursue their own deepheld individual questions surrounding trust, purpose and roots, while wrestling with the idea of what it means to be a modern family. Milly, in the meantime, has a lot on her paws with these two! Part rom-com, part rescue-dog story, part autofiction, part self-indictment, part family scrapbook, this debut feature was made with remarkable economy and displays a disquieting amount of (often hilarious) emotional authenticity. Filmmaker Ben Petrie and creative collaborator Grace Glowicki play the young couple and in doing so, capture nothing less than what it means to be human.
A committed couple finds their life slipping away, not because they’ve done anything in particular, ...
