Advertisement

Movies & TV News & Features

Cote’s quirks

NEW AUTEURS: DENIS COTE at TIFF Cinematheque (TIFF Bell Lightbox), Saturday to Tuesday (March 5-8). See Indie & Rep Film. Rating: NNNN

Denis Cote is one of Canada’s most intriguing filmmakers. In just six years, he’s established an international reputation with his austere, idiosyncratic studies of isolated characters and vaguely sinister situations.

He’s won two major prizes at the Locarno Film Festival and screened in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. But Torontonians only hear of him when his films turn up at TIFF or land in Canada’s Top Ten. Despite strong critical support, none of Cote’s films has opened here theatrically.

Until now, that is. Cote’s fifth feature, Curling – a study of a fiercely protective father and his sheltered daughter living in self-imposed isolation in a tiny Quebec village – gets a Toronto release this week at TIFF Bell Lightbox, alongside a TIFF Cinematheque retrospective of his films.

“You make films in Quebec and you always have this impression that Toronto is that other country, you know?” Cote says from his Montreal home. “If you’re Belgian or whatever, your film comes out in your whole country and that’s it. Here, Ontario is like something to conquer.”

Getting Cote’s films to bridge the two solitudes is complicated further by the somewhat complex nature of his work. He’s almost exclusively concerned with people who choose, rightly or wrongly, to remove themselves from the world.

“These people, they don’t relate totally with society,” he says, “but society is right there, a few metres away. And the challenge of the whole film, the challenge of Curling, is how to bring back these people to society, back to the world. Society is never far [away] should we be a part of it or not? I really like that question it’s in all my films.”

That’s an ultimately optimistic point of view, which might strike some as odd, considering the way Cote folds disturbing and confrontational elements into his narratives.

His debut feature, Les Etats Nordiques (Drifting States), opens with a son ending his comatose mother’s suffering his second, Nos Vies Privees (Our Private Lives), takes place in a rural cabin where two would-be lovers are stalked by something unseen and primal in the woods. Curling has its dark images, too: the father comes upon a gravely injured child by the side of the road, and his daughter discovers a cache of frozen corpses in the woods near their home.

Cote doesn’t explain these images he just lets them simmer in the larger narratives, using them for mood and tone more than plot development.

“I like the viewer to work a little,” he says. “If you came there to just get answers, it’s totally ungratifying, you know? I need an active viewer, that’s for sure. If you get in that theatre without the intention of working a little, you’re in deep trouble.”

It’s a stance that’s led to a few contentious Q&A sessions after the credits roll – and will again, most likely, when Cote attends the Cinematheque retrospective this weekend.

“I’ve had my share of confrontations with the audience,” he says with a chuckle. “Some people really think I should provide much more answers than I’m providing some people come to my defence – it’s always the same. I have to stand there, smile and make sure I’m friendly.”

normw@nowtoronto.com

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.