Suddenly, this summer

>> Quebec auteur Léa Pool directs the tortured lesbian romance Lost and Delirious

by MATTHEW HAYS

On the surface, the song would appear to be remaining the same for Quebec filmmaker Léa Pool this summer. Her seventh feature, Lost and Delirious, will be released. And the film has traits Pool followers will recognize immediately.

There are strong female leads, as was the case in Pool entries Emporte-moi and Urgence. There is that Euro feel, which might possibly be attributed to her roots (the Geneva-born Pool emigrated to Quebec in the '70s). And there are the same-sex relationships, something she's also touched on in the features Anne Trister and A corps perdu.

But with Lost and Delirious, there are key differences, and Pool concedes the film meant taking a number of risks. First, it's the first time she's worked from someone else's screenplay. As well, the film is her first in English. While some subtitled films do manage to make box-office records (witness Life Is Beautiful or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), the fact is English-language films have a far better chance of breaking on through to the other side. Thus this entry feels like a brand new litmus test for the 51-year-old auteur. For Pool, the stakes for the three-million-plus budgeted Delirious are high.

Linguistic logistics

"Clearly, if an English film is good, it can open you up to a much wider audience," she tells me. "But the film has to be good, of course. If I succeed, it will help. If I make a mediocre film, it will mean nothing."

So far, all indicators look good for Pool and her latest project. Lost and Delirious is based on Susan Swan's novel The Wives of Bath, the screenplay adaptation penned by celebrated Toronto playwright Judith Thompson. The plot involves three adolescent girls who are enmeshed in a precarious love triangle, one made all the more troublesome by their conservative girls'-school environment. The love two of them share seems innocuous enough, but uptight types at the school will have nothing of it, and that's when the trouble begins. Pool has long been credited with knockout casting calls, and this film will prove no exception. The three girls in the film are played by Jessica Paré (Stardom), Mischa Barton (The Sixth Sense, Pups) and Piper Perabo (Coyote Ugly, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle).

The film had its premiere at the prestigious Sundance Fest in Utah in January, where it played to solid reviews and strong interest from distributors. The result is a wide release across North America this summer (late July, though the film will screen here later this month as part of the Magnifico Film Fest).

And Pool attributes no small part of the film's advance buzz to its stars, three young women she says she was thrilled to work with. "I like working with younger actors because there's something very natural about them. It's difficult to find actors who have more experience like them. There's something very real about it--they just jump right into their roles and get right into it."

Kissing and telling

For Paré, that meant leaping into a lesbian tryst, a role she had no qualms about playing. "I kind of hope most people are past that," Paré says of the fuss over gal-on-gal romance. "All the reporters have been, 'Like, what's it like kissing a girl?' I'm like, 'It's all right, if she's chewing gum.'"

The lesbian label is one that does lead Pool to sigh, more than a bit. She did shudder when an advance report on Delirious that appeared in Variety described the film as a lesbian love story. She's tired of the label, but at the same time doesn't want to deny or shy away from what lies at the heart of the film.

"I hate this, of course. It's much more than this. It's a reduction of what it is. Yes, it's a love story between women, but it's about so much more than that. For me, it makes me a bit crazy, because it's just one word. People sometimes seem to need one word to reduce everything to."

Indeed, gay themes have been a staple of her work, but Pool says the press have relied a wee bit too heavily on that line of analysis for her oeuvre. "I don't feel the need to confirm it every time. It's like, what's next? Sometimes I get a lot of questions about it. For a lot of the gay and lesbian community, it's a gay film if there's a gay love story in it. But we don't call films heterosexual films when they have a man and a woman in the love story."

Pool says she has drawn on other school-age movies for inspiration, including Lindsay Anderson's if... and Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society. The former is a bizarre exercise in style, in which Malcolm McDowell led a group of classmates in a rebellion against their teachers; the latter is a more sentimental take on camaraderie at a boarding school and Robin Williams' role model status among a group of impressionable students.

"Obviously, Anderson and Weir are great directors," Pool says, hopefully. "If I can come close to what they've done, that would be something."

Lost and Delirious will have its Canadian premiere as part of Magnifico on June 13. The film opens wide in late July

Simply Magnifico!

>> The fourth annual summer fest unreels

by MATTHEW HAYS

As well as the much-anticipated latest from Léa Pool, Magnifico 2001 will offer a diverse masala of international celluloid. Magnifico organizers, clearly cognizant of the fact that they're forced to compete with big-budget Hollywood blockbusters like Pearl Harbor, have added another enticement: tickets to their event are a mere five bucks. Where can you go wrong? This year's highlights include:

Swedish director Lukas Moodysson (best known for the lesbian schoolgirl cult hit Fucking Amal) returns with Together, an oddity about two worlds colliding. Set in '75, the film has a woman leaving her abusive husband and moving, with her two children, into her brother's home. The catch? Bro is a hardcore hippie, living in a wild and anything-goes commune, something which doesn't thrill his somewhat more conservative sister.

In true Robert Altman style, a number of lives meet up, however tangentially, in Robert Guédiguian's La Ville est tranquille. Marriages break down, drug addictions are battled, ex-cons negotiate new lives after being released from prison, a grand piano is acquired... Episodic madness from the director behind Marius et Jeannette and À la place du coeur. Fateful, anecdotal filmmaking also takes flight in the Swedish Songs From the Second Floor, in which director Roy Andersson has arson, a violent attack on an immigrant and a man being fired in a humiliating fashion all intersect in a small town.

Diehard fans of the late Euromaster Krzysztof Kieslowski will delight in a rare treat, as Magnifico features an anthology of short documentaries made by the auteur in the late '70s and early '80s, including Du point de vue d'un veilleur de nuit, Les Têtes parlantes and La Gare.

Magnifico will pay special tribute to the Montreal-based film collective Kino, by screening their entire works. Launched in '99 by UQÀM film school graduate Christian Laurence, the group has strived to create immediate, spontaneous and original works by local directors, including Iann St-Denis, Eza Paventi, Carl Pelletier and Philippe Falardeau. As the Kino team's motto indicates, "To do good with nothing! To do great with not much! And to do it right now!"

As well, the Montreal film institution Cinéma Parallèle turns 35 this year, and the birthday will be celebrated at Ex-Centris, their new home. Since '67, the Parallèle has unspooled hundreds of thousands of reels of alternative celluloid. To mark the anniversary, six films, including Frank Cole's Life Without Death, Amos Gitai's Kadosh and Léa Pool's first feature Stress Café, will be screened, free of charge.

Not to be overlooked is Bad Girl, Marielle Nitoslawaska's Quebec-France coproduction about women who are breaking traditional concepts of women and sex. Nina Hartley, Catherine Breillat and Annie Sprinkle are all interviewed.

Magnifico runs this Wednesday, June 13-17; info: 847-2206 or www.ex-centris.com