Drifting States
Nov 11, 2011
(Denis Côté, 2005, Canada, 35mm, 91 min)
Seattle Premiere!
Côté’s first film already displays the documentary realist aesthetic, interest in the margins of society, and conceptual rigor that have come to characterize his body of work. After euthanizing his terminally ill mother, Christian (Christian LeBlanc) leaves Montreal and becomes a garbage collector in a remote town on James Bay. As he builds a new life, the film’s focus shifts as much to the small town world surrounding Christian as on the protagonist himself, who waits for his past to catch up to him. Côté’s assured balance of documentary and dramatic elements, as well as his undeniable talent for atmospheric tension, earned this film a Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 2005.
"The Stranger Suggests: The films of the French-Canadian director Denis Côté are challenging, but only a coward registers all challenges as bad. We must not be cowards in the case of Côté’s films. We must confront and experience them as fully as possible. They deserve our effort. The difficulty in Côté’s cinema is not in the style (manner) but the substance (matter), and this substance primarily concerns the limits and fragility of human morality." —The Stranger
“Perhaps the most interesting and idiosyncratic filmmaker to emerge from Canada over the past decade.”—Adam Nayman, Moving Image Source