Teen tribulations

Cinema vérité meets high school angst in
Quebec drama À l’ouest de pluton

YOUNG AND RESTLESS: À l’ouest de pluton

by CHRISTOPHER SYKES

There’s been a resurgence of coming-of-age dramas on QC big screens the last few months. Local filmmakers have nostalgically touched on everything from the birth of the Expos (Francis Leclerc’s Un été sans point ni coup sûr) to moms saying “to hell with it” and shoving off to Europe (both Léa Pool’s Maman est chez le coiffeur and Philippe Falardeau’s C’est pas moi, je le jure). Clearly there’s something about 1960’s coiffs and mommy issues I’m not getting.

Bucking the trend, first-time directors Henry Bernadet and Myriam Verreault’s cinéma vérité-inspired drama À l’ouest de pluton is mercifully set in modern-day Loretteville, a suburb of Quebec. Having grown up there themselves, Bernadet and Verreault set out on a six-month mission to cast teens from a local high school for their self-financed micro-budget feature. The result is an ensemble of a dozen non-professional youngsters who are remarkably at ease in front of the camera and able to play off each other in many scenes of surely improvised dialogue.

The title relates to Pierre-Olivier’s (David Bouchard) dismay over Pluto losing its planetary status. Pluto, like so many of the film’s characters, has identity issues and Pierre-Olivier can relate. His classmates are in the same boat: with her parents out of town, sore thumb Émilie (Sandra Jacques) reluctantly organizes a party that gets out of hand. In a show of (predictable) teen angst, the mob of stoned and drunken teens trash the place. As the drama unfolds, lovesick Jérôme (Alexis Drolet) waits for his chance to finally tell Kim (Anne-Sophie Tremblay-Lamontagne) she’s the love of his life. As one can guess, it doesn’t go according to plan.

There’s simply too much going on in this open-ended drama that’s part Gus van Sant, part Larry Clark. While it intentionally shies away from moralizing the choices the youths make, it doesn’t tie up enough of its own loose ends to satisfy when the credits roll. It’s not a bad film, but perhaps best remembered as a document of our times more than a must-see drama

À L’OUEST DE PLUTON OPENS THIS
FRIDAY, OCT. 24