Maudite poutine / Shambles (Karl Lemieux 2016)

I really wanted to be really impressed by this movie. I had been fond of Karl Lemieux before I actually saw any of his works – that’s because he seems to have ears attuned to interesting frequencies of contemporary music. He has worked with Francisco López, BJ Nilsen, Thomas Ankersmit, Jerusalem in my heart, Christof Migone, Shalabi Effect, Elizabeth Anka Vajagic, Philip Jeck, Jonathan Parant, Alexandre St-Onge and is responsible for visuals (from 16-mm projector) at concerts of Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

Knowing about his interest in celluloid it’s easy to think about Flickr when Maudite poutine starts with alternating black and white frames. That way we enter a concert and see the main protagonist among the audience. He is a drummer but his band is, well, in shambles because guys did a very stupid thing and now they have to pay for it.

So there is a lot of music, diegetic and not, interesting and not (i.e. weepy guitars). I can’t find the person(s) responsible for soundtrack and I doubt it’s all Olivier Calvert’s sound design (quite a resume he has – to mention just a few: Madame Tutli-Putli, Blind Vaysha, Le démantèlement, Upside Down). Sibelius makes an unexpected appearance as a “contemporary composer” which made me smile but actually his piece is put to good use here.

Those who saw Passage Lemieux short from 2007 will be reminded about it from time to time. Similar landscapes and ways of filming then recuur here. The director tries really hard to “do” something with reality, after slow motion he would try speeding up or blurring. In fact he might be trying too hard and should probably leave more room for Marc Boucrot sensible editing (also a colorist here he was one of the three editors of Enter the Void and assistant editor for Irréversible).

I wasn’t impressed but still I think this is a competent movie. It’s probably me who lack certain experiences which makes it harder to sympathize with those guys or to develop any real emotions. And then some elements thought as analogies of their situation, like this from nature documentary or a childhood story about killing a bird that can’t fly, are a bit too easy to decipher. The same goes for cleansing which is our main guy job but there is also purification through fire.