OUR LOVED ONES (Les Êtres Chers)

CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA D: Anne Émond. Canada. 102 min. Sep 14, 10 pm TIFF Bell Lightbox 2 Sep 16, 4:15 pm Scotiabank 13. See TIFF.net. Rating: NNNN

Émond follows her economical debut Nuit #1 with an equally intimate but narratively sprawling generational drama about a Quebec family over the course of a quarter-century or so, focusing primarily on sensitive David Leblanc (Maxim Gaudette) and his daughter Laurence (played from her teen years onward by the terrific Karelle Tremblay), whose lives are shadowed by the mental illnesses of people closest to them.

Émond brings a light touch to profound material, and though she occasionally drifts into territory covered in Jean-Marc Vallée’s C.R.A.Z.Y. and Marco Tullio Giordana’s The Best Of Youth, that was probably unavoidable. Only a handful of films have even attempted this kind of story-telling. They’re bound to echo one -another.