Some people might call this movie quirky, like its title, but I think it’s merely unusual. First off, not many movies are about a 61-year-old woman, let alone one who’s an ex-convict like Vic(toria) (Pierrette Robitaille). Not many movies are set in rural Québec, where Vic has come to stay at a cabin owned by her now-paralyzed uncle. And writer-director Denis Côté brings a kind of deadpan sensibility to his film, composing the story as a series of vignettes, skipping forward a few days or a few minutes. Typical is the way we learn about Flo (Romane Bohringer), Vic’s younger girlfriend. After showing a lonely Vic crying, Côté cuts to a shot of a blanket on a bed. Behind the blanket we hear two voices, but don’t see either woman.
Maybe that’s a little quirky. But there’s a sincerity as well as we follow the two women trying to shed the past, but not necessarily with the same goals. The past follows them both; for Vic, it’s in the form of a parole officer who periodically visits. I didn’t like everything about this movie, including the left-turn ending, or how little we learn about Vic’s past. The presence of paralyzed uncle seems barely to fit with the rest of the story. But it was never boring.
IMDb link
viewed 10/26/13 4:50 pm at Ritz East [Philadelphia Film Festival screening]
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