by MATTHEW HAYS

Montreal filmmaker Roy Cross’s directorial debut, So Faraway and Blue, which had its premiere at the World Film Fest two years ago, is an exercise in minimalism.

Ross uses his Montreal landscape to great effect, mapping out his lost characters over a couple of hot summer days in the city. Central is Nicole Eliopoulos, a young bleach-blonde waif who wanders about the city in an Amélie-like fog, living by night in her pad (which is an abandoned swimming pool). She meets up with Daniel Giverin, a refugee from Alberta who is desperately seeking reconciliation with an old flame he dumped one fateful night when they were in Mexico. Eliopoulos and Giverin eye each other warily as they proceed to let their inner emotions come to the surface. Ross manages to make their scenes at once simple and complex; this pair’s chemistry is really an achievement, and I’d like to see these two in a sequel of sorts.

Meanwhile, the woman Giverin is searching for (Julie Ménard) is having it off with Bradley Moss, these two playing another pair of lost souls. Giverin has an ongoing dream about Ménard, which unfolds as the film proceeds and his search for her lingers on.

Though Ross’s script sometimes borders on the ostentatious (“I’m only scared of things I can’t see, or things I can’t kill,” Eliopoulos utters at one point), he should be praised for telling an unusual and melancholic story with virtually no dialogue. Shot beautifully in glorious black and white by cinematographer Michael Wees, So Faraway and Blue plays out almost like a tormented David Lynch dreamscape, unreeling in slo-mo. The film stands in stark contrast to what’s normally found in your local multiplex. This is a subversive bit of storytelling, an independent film that favours the poetic over plotting, an urban fable that feels downright Leonard Cohenesque. :

So Faraway and Blue opens Friday, Jan. 31

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