Maelström

Bibiane is depressed and cannot hold her work or her life together. One night she hits a fishmonger with her car and drives off. The man dies. Instead of confessing she meets his son and something starts between them. The whole story is narrated by a fish, a talking fish waiting to be cut up. Denis Villeneuve wrote and directed. Marie-Josee Croze plays Bibiane and Jean-Nicolas Verreault plays Evian, with Pierre Lebeau voicing the fish. Villeneuve chose Croze, then a novice, for the particular energy she carried, and was not pressed to cast a bigger name. The talking fish was built as an animatronic, designed to resemble a prehistoric species, with big black eyes and a sad, gaping mouth. It was shot in Montreal between September and November 1999 on a 3.4 million dollar budget and premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival in August 2000. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 79 percent. It won five Genie Awards including Best Motion Picture and took the FIPRESCI Prize at Berlin. It was Canada's Oscar submission but did not receive a nomination. One review called it a meditation on the disconnection between glossy urban surfaces and life-and-death realities. Who it is for: viewers curious about where Villeneuve started and who like strange narrative devices. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for the lead to face what she did. The film leaves the moral account deliberately unfinished.