5150 Elm's Way

Yannick moves to a small town to study cinema. Riding his bicycle he falls and is hurt. He knocks at the nearest house. A man opens the door. He goes in and sees something that should not be there. The man will not let him leave. Yannick is locked in a room upstairs. There is a family in the house: a mother, two daughters and the father. All of them behave as if living an ordinary life. The father, Jacques, makes him an offer: they will play chess. If Yannick wins he will be freed. Éric Tessier directs. Marc-André Grondin plays Yannick and Normand D'Amour plays Jacques; Sonia Vachon and Mylène St-Sauveur are in the cast. It is a Canadian production, from Quebec. The source is Patrick Senécal's novel; the writer is known in Quebec for horror and suspense and his books have been adapted many times. The mechanism it builds is chess; the game works not as a means of escape but as a form of imprisonment. The man's justification is moral; he counts himself a judge and describes what he does as a duty. The narrative does not show the family as one dimensional; the daughters and the mother carry their positions differently. As the narrative proceeds Yannick changes too, and the film does not offer that as a deliverance. Its limit is the watching; the violence is explicit, the register suffocating and the narrative gives no relief. Another limit is pace; the middle stretch runs long and gives a sense of repetition. Who it is for: viewers who like Quebec cinema and psychological thrillers. Who it is not for: it is uncomfortable, long, and the ending dark.