by MATTHEW HAYS

Lie With Me

This sexually explicit, Toronto-based love story isn’t the Last Tango in Paris it wants to be, but there’s something to be said for a Canadian film that can make you claw the carpet by the end of the first act.

Adapted from a novel written by Tamara Berger and directed by her partner Clément Virgo, Lie With Me follows a beautiful club kid named Leila (Lauren Lee Smith). The poor thing knows how to fuck to get what she wants but doesn’t know how to love. That is until she meets codependant stallion David (Eric Balfour). Together these love-struck nymphs must overcome their intimacy issues, but not before they screw their way across T-dot.

Smith gives a solid performance here, while Balfour walks the Keanu Reeves line between understated and vacant (we’ll have to see what he can pull off with his next role to make a decision either way). Virgo milks enough onscreen chemistry from the two leads to carry out Berger’s Playgirl approach to young, urban titillation. But be warned: those who like their porn served up through a gynecologist’s lens, this is not for you. Likewise, those searching for some subtext behind the many varied thrusts need not apply. After all, Bernardo Bertolucci Virgo is not, but at least he’s trying to sex up Canadian cinema.

Joyeux Noël

Based on war records, this international production recreates Christmas Eve 1914, when warring soldiers crawled out of their respective trenches to declare a 24-hour truce. In keeping with the peace-on- Earth spirit of the actual event, director Christian Carion merges three different storylines, giving each nation equal screen time. The German protagonist is a celebrated opera singer trying to make his way back to his beautiful singing partner. The Scottish plot follows two young delusional brothers who thought they were signing up for an “adventure.” (Ahh, that old chestnut.) Meanwhile, on the French side, a young lieutenant anxiously awaits any news about the birth of his firstborn.

For the first third of the movie, we see these men blast bullets through each other indiscriminately. So there’s something very surreal about them putting down their rifles to swap chocolate and exchange photos of their wives.

There is also some untapped comedic potential here, as the troops keep finding excuses to drag out their illegal peace treaty—a simple midnight mass leads to the soldiers pitching in to build a proper graveyard in no man’s land, then it’s a soccer match, so on and so on.

Carion chooses to stay clear of the dark humour possibilities. Instead, he opts to spell out the moral of the story: War is good for absolutely nothing except lining the pockets of the fat rich pigs in power. Carion really drives home this timeless message by showing us how dearly the soldiers pay for their night of festive fraternizing. Joyeux Noël is not an edgy film for adults alone, but it is the kind of banal family viewing designed to inject some goodwill into your holiday season. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Lie With Me and Joyeux Noël open Friday, Dec. 16

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