It had been ten years since Quebecer Ivan Grbovic had proposed a feature film. At the time, his Romeo Eleven, portrait of a young disabled immigrant enjoying a prosperous life on the Internet, awarded at the Rendez-vous du cinema québécois 2013, had received a warm welcome. But moviegoers hadn’t forgotten it.
So here is launched Monday evening The birds drunk, produced by micro_scope, in the great hall of the Bell Lightbox at the Toronto Film Festival. His film participates in the platform section, devoted to emerging works, and Ivan Grbovic sees this selection as an honor. A work in English had to be shot before The drunken birds, but wait for green lights.
By following the dream of Willy from Mexico to Quebec, a young lover who seeks his lost flame, we see universes colliding. He was dating Marlene, the companion of a drug lord in Mexico. He believes her to be a refugee in Montreal.
This second feature film with a complex script, straddling raw realism and magical realism, is a fascinating and visually rich work, which follows several tracks. Its action bifurcates along the way, embraces many points of view, while leaving the range of possibilities hovering. This film (on our screens November 5) came to the world in slow gestation. The filmmaker ensures that he takes his time to refine his stories with Sara Mishara, his partner, co-writer and director of photography.
With a main role played while sensibility by Jorge Antonio Guerrero (seen in Roma, d’Alfonso Cuarón), Drunken birds inherits an excellent general distribution. The long breaths of the scenes, the unusual images that emerge without warning, the multiple dramas haunt its plot. The filmmaker rightly considers Drunken birds as more assumed and complex than Romeo Eleven.
He speaks of his hero as a prince in search of his sweetheart, a sort of modern Don Quixote. This young Mexican lands on a lettuce farm in Quebec that hires seasonal workers. The boss (Claude Legault, with a very strong, inhabited, concentrated game) will be in turn human and unfair. His wife (Hélène Florent) cheats on him, his teenage daughter (Marine Johnson) lies to him and gets caught up in a dirty story. Everything will fall on Willy’s back. Incidentally, the lives of foreign workers seem to be captured naturally, with repetitive labor, echoed by a guitar tune, through disputes and outbursts of solidarity.
“Everyone is a victim”
Shot in scope and in 35mm by Mishara’s camera, favoring end-of-day lighting, in this blue hour, which inspires their duo, the film imposes its myth and its hatched rhythm. The music of different languages, the entangled cultures, the settings of Mexico City, Montreal and the Quebec countryside capture the mosaic of the world. The shattered structure imposed itself along the way. “Today, a film can change perspective in the middle, cross its destinies”, estimates the filmmaker.
The themes ofimmigration and the difference is evident in his works. Born in Quebec to parents from Yugoslavia, Ivan Grbovic is sensitive to these realities, but refuses clichés. “I didn’t want to pit the good workers against the bad Quebecers. They all need each other. “
After researching the condition of seasonal workers in agriculture, the team toured a row in Saint-Rémi, near Montreal, and some of the extras were genuine lettuce cutters. Ivan Grbovic does not write with actors on stage, but was looking for solid performers. “Jorge Antonio Guerrero was getting ready to shoot a movie in New York, but he likes all the roles that take him elsewhere. Claude Legault had to play a crucial scene in the rain which demanded a performer dominating his game. Hélène Florent in the role of the wife was a crush, and Marine Johnson is a great actress. His lie brings the key to the third act that redefines action. In Drunken birds, everyone is a victim. “
This beautiful film with drawers, which retains its mysteries, leaves the spectator to imagine the continuation of things. Happy end or door open to new shipwrecks? Willy’s dream has a life of its own that is reinvented in our minds.
Watch video
Reference-feedproxy.google.com