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Home / Essays / Film Reviews / Ville-Marie is gorgeously dispassionate ***1/2

Mary Angela Rowe / September 4, 2015

Ville-Marie is gorgeously dispassionate ***1/2

Ville-Marie
Courtesy of TIFF.

Guy Édoin’s Ville-Marie is a visually striking film with a curiously dispassionate core. The film, co-written by Édoin, tells the stories of four individuals whose lives intersect one night at Ville-Marie Hospital in Montreal. A European actress (Monica Belucci) is filming in Montreal to reconnect with her son (Aliocha Schneider), who is trying to finally learn the identity of his father. A paramedic with PTSD (Patrick Hivon) leans on a nurse (Pascal Bussières), who is coping with an overcrowded emergency room by burying her own traumas.

These tales of love, motherhood, sex, and sacrifice unspool against a refreshingly unsentimental background. Édoin’s long following shots and unhurried close-ups give the film a measured pace, counterbalancing its almost melodramatic plot. This aesthetic exactitude comes at the price of emotional resonance, but for a film this gorgeous, who really cares? See this and admire it, even if the stories won’t linger.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB2WPgCyKlQ]

Ville-Marie is now available on VOD.

Read more articles about Québécois Cinema here.

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Filed Under: Canadian cinema, Essays, Film Reviews Tagged With: Canadian cinema, Toronto International Film Festival

Mary Angela Rowe

Mary Angela Rowe is Editor-at-Large at The Seventh Row. Mary Angela is a lapsed Victorianist currently living in Toronto after stints in Boston and Montreal. Her background in history and literature informs her love of movies like Notorious and Martin — though she’s equally happy watching Heathers or Goon. Her favourite film is Doctor Strangelove.

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