Weekly round-up

>> Gold-diggers, pill-poppers and
panoramic pictures

by HILLARY BRENHOUSE
and MALCOLM FRASER

Hors de prix

In Pierre Salvadori’s romantic comedy, Jean (Gad Elmaleh) is a hapless young waiter in a Côte d’Azur hotel. One night, he meets Irène (Audrey Tautou), an unscrupulous gold-digger who somehow mistakes him for one of her millionaire marks. He happily goes along with her misperception, quickly disposing of his meagre life’s savings and falling tragically in love.

With the opulent setting and retrograde gender roles, Salvadori seems to be aiming for the romantic-comedy vibe of days gone by. It’s a gambit that misses the mark almost completely—the characters are generally unappealing, and although there are a few plot twists, the pacing of the film is gratingly predictable.

The only thing that saves it from utter crapulence is the two leads. Tautou flips her sugary coquette act to embody the ruthlessly amoral sexpot Irène with compelling flair. There’s a fascinating scene where she gives Elmaleh a demonstration of her seduction tricks, methodically going through the faces that charm her victims. It’s like a metatextual commentary on the film, her own cinematic persona and the practice of acting itself. Elmaleh, for his part, demonstrates that physical comedy means more than just pratfalls—his sad-sack slouch, deep gaze and pitiful bumbling have an almost Chaplinesque quality.

So if you have an academic interest in acting craft, or if you just like looking at attractive people wearing designer clothes and jewellery in exotic locales, then check this out. But on strictly romantic and comic merits, Hors de prix is bargain-basement stuff. (MF)

Québec sur ordonnance

PHARMACEUTICAL FOLLIES: Québec sur ordonnance

Paul Arcand’s forceful remonstration against the pharmaceutical industry is out to prove that pills are as dependent on patients as patients are on pills. A Michael Moore-ish tirade with a bit less bite, Québec sur ordonnance weaves together compelling interviews, appalling statistics and a few ingeniously placed pieces of footage to form a commanding, if one-sided, documentary assault.

The film feeds on images of apathetic adolescents numbed by Ritalin, depressive oddballs confused as to what the medication they take daily is even meant to do, and doctors being wooed by all-powerful pharmaceutical reps. The drug company, always eager to make a buck or two, is cast as a street-side dealer who will not be denied.

Watch as Arcand bullies Québec Health Minister Philippe Couillard, as he doles out placebos in a shopping mall, helps himself to samples in a hospital storage closet, or purchases hundreds of pills effortlessly online. How disturbing to discover that, on average, Quebec residents take 750 pills a year, often in a desperate search for a quick fix. The movie may take a few cheap shots—it’s rare to come across a documentary with such a clear agenda that doesn’t—but it remains remarkably sharp and effective. Like Moore, Arcand knows just how to push the envelope, fuelling his flick with a great deal of shock value and a high dose of cynicism.

The message here is shrewd and unfailingly captivating, sure to entertain you, stun you, then reel you right in. Well worth catching so long as you remember to take your truth with a grain of salt. (HB)

La Terre vue du ciel

French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand has made a career of taking panoramic pictures from an aerial point of view. You might recall some of them from an outdoor exhibit on McGill-College a few years back. Some of his photos are simply beautiful (hundreds of colourful carpets drying in the sun in India; innumerable natural landscapes), but often they document the gruesome effects of industrialization on the planet. That these images—of oil slicks, overpopulated slums, devastated landscapes and the like—are often just as aesthetically pleasing gives his work a dark, poetic irony.

Director Renaud Delourme has assembled several of Arthus-Bertrand’s photos for this curious new film. Though promoted as a documentary, it’s simply a series of the photos run back to back, with minimal use of zooms and pans to distinguish it from a glorified PowerPoint presentation. Delourme narrates with a voice-over full of flaky environmentalist clichés (references to trees crying, the earth bleeding and so on) and a cringe-inducing dialogue with a young child.

If not for an eight-minute short on Arthus-Bertrand that the Cinéma du Parc has helpfully programmed on the bill, we’d have no sense of the context of the work. Although it’s nice to see the images on the big screen, it would be advisable to bring earplugs to block out the sound—or better yet, just pick up Arthus-Bertrand’s new book, 100 nouvelles photos de Yann Arthus-Bertrand pour la liberté de la presse, whose proceeds go to families of journalists killed on the job. (MF)

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