The Mirage

A man in his thirties who, from the outside, has everything: a house, a car, a wife, children, a job. From the inside none of it is enough. The loan payments keep growing, the marriage is tired, the work has lost its meaning. He asks himself one question and cannot answer it: what has he been chasing all this time. Directed by Ricardo Trogi, this Quebec film hollows out a life built on consumption and display. The idea that what you own does not close a gap runs through the middle of it. The telling starts as comedy, then slides steadily into pain, and it does not reward the man with an easy revelation. Louis Morissette both takes the lead and wrote it. One of the harder things Quebec cinema has made about its own middle class.