Ville-Marie (Guy Édoin, 2015): Canada

Reviewed by Dakota Miller-Thompson. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Winner of this years Best International Film at SBIFF, Guy Édoin’s French-Canadian film Ville-Marie will shake you and grip you till then end. Deserving of all its’ success, those who were fortunate enough to catch the U.S. premier know what I mean when I say that you are hooked from the start. With a jolting first scene, you soon find it hard to turn away. Though the lives of the disheveled characters don’t fully come together till the end, the suspense, mystery and complexity of each character will keep you intrigued.

Set in downtown Montreal, the film opens up with Sophie Bernard (Monica Belluci), a beautiful European actress, arriving at the airport. While Sophie had come to Montreal to shoot a film, her son Thomas (Aliocha Schneider) also happens to go to University in town. As the story unfolds, the complexity of Sophie and her relationship with her son Thomas becomes apparently rocky. Thomas, never knowing his birth father, blames his mother for keeping his identity a secret and loathes her for not telling him. As their relationship intensifies and begins to spiral out, you are also introduced to a paramedic and nurse from the local hospital Ville-Marie. The paramedic Pierre Pascal (Patrick Hivon) and nurse Marie Santerre (Pascale Bussieres) have complexities and demons of their own that become apparent as the movie plays out, but none seem so well orchestrated as Sophie and Thomas’.

Though the personal lives of both Pierre and Marie’s are touched on, they don’t conclude with as much clarity as those of Sophie and Thomas’. Though all of their lives soon become intimately intertwined, the well coordinated and performed role of Sophie will compensate for the minor gaps in character development amongst the others. An overall beautifully shot, well composed, wonderfully scripted piece, Guy Édoin has shown that he is most definitely a young director to lookout for.