Triptych (Robert Lepage and Pedro Piles, 2013): Canada

Reviewed by Cornelia Eriksson. Viewed at Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

This is a Canadian drama about three characters; Michelle Lavallée (Lise Castonguay), Thomas Bruckner (Hans Piersbergen) and Marie Lavallée (Frédérike Bédard). Their three different stories are connected with each other. Thomas is the alcoholic doctor who marries Marie. Marie, who recently has discovered a tumor in her brain, also has to deal with her sister Michelle who is schizophrenic and mentally unstable.

I believe these situations shows good examples of what life for some people could really look like. It’s a good reminder for those of you who believe that there is so many people with perfect lives. Because all of these problems are invisible and they are often hidden behind closed doors. However, I also think that the filmmaker wants to show that you can learn from every failure and that in every tragic disaster you may find something so beautiful such as love.

Triptych has a film noir look which certainly fits the plot. The mix between low-key lights and hard shadows reminds me of the style in Citizen Kane. The cinematographer Pedro Piles, uses red and blue lights combined with black and brown filtered shadows which creates a different appearance. Sometimes the environments and the actors seem to be animated or created out of clay.

I am going to say the same thing as everyone else says; this  cinematography is genius and unique!
I must also say that one thing I really liked with this movie is the classical orchestra background music, because it tends to create a feeling of innocence and sensitivity.

Sometimes they shot scenes through  a window in which you couldn’t hear dialogs and diegetic sound etc. This was a really interesting technique which helps to create more tension. They used a lot of close ups and the sound effects were really good. Pedro Piles and Robert Lepage managed to create both great music and fascinating cinematography. Taken together, they were astonishing.