Blind Spot (Fabrice Barrilliet, Nicolas Bolduc, Julien Knafo, Marie-Helene Panisset, 2009): Canada

Reviewed by Stacie Manifold. Viewed at the Lobero Theatre at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2011.

The Blind Spot, screened at the Santa Barbara Film Festival as it’s US premiere, is a unique collaboration of four long-time friends; Fabrice Barrilliet, Nicolas Bolduc, Julien Knafo and Marie-Helene Panisset.  The film is an adaptation of a play by the name Lucidite passagere written by Martin Thibaudeau.

The plot is simple and follows the lives of four people living in Quebec.  Veronique (played by Helene Florent) is a sculptor unable to stay in a long-term relationship.  Mathieu (Mario Saint-Amand) works in a children’s hospital ward and becomes very emotionally connected to his patients.  Fred (Erik Duhamel) is a photographer unable to stay faithful to any one women.  Remi (Daniel Parent) is bored with his office job and trying to find what sparks his passion.  Living in the same city, the character’s lives intermingle over the course of the film.

The screenplay may not be the most original idea, but the format in which the film was conceived and put together is fascinating.  We had the pleasure of speaking with all four directors in a Q&A after the screening.  The friends had gone to see the play Lucidite passagere together in June 2006.  The play follows the stories of four separate people.  The four friends decided to write their first feature film based on this premise.  They split off and individually wrote a screenplay telling the story of one person.  Then the playwright Martin Thibaudeau was brought in to meld their separate screenplays together to form a feature film.

A couple key decisions were made early on that allowed this endeavor to be successful.  One agreement was that the friends were making one movie about their four stories, not four movies.  Each person would direct their portion of the movie, but to keep the story uniform one person would have the role of cinematographer for the entire film and one person did the music for the entire film.  It was also important to them that there was never more than one director on the set at one time.  During shooting, whatever character a scene was focused on or was about, that respective writer acted as the director.

One of the actresses was also at the Q&A session.  Judith Baribeau who played the role of Emilie enjoyed this unique experience.  One day she would be in scenes where Fabrice Barrilliet was her director then as the character perspective of the story changed, on another day of shooting, Nicolas Bolduc would be acting as director.

The film was very enjoyable to watch with well-developed characters and experienced actors that played their roles in a very realistic way.  Knowing the back story about how the movie came together heightened the experience.