It is always a pleasure to watch an excellent director put the time, thought, and effort into making a short.
After seeing Martin Villeneuve's TED Talk, I immediately watched his feature MARS ET AVRIL and was blown away. It's poetry of language and imagery is visually stunning and emotionally moving in an epic story about existence. This short is a meditation on existence but in a very different way; in contrast, smaller and more intimate, as we see an older woman near the end of her life.
I found this one funnier than the first. Partly because Villeneuve as Imelda was able to play off another actor--one of Canada's best, Robert Lepage--who's begrudging, obligatory, hilariously annoyed response to her absurdity as her son is delightful.
Imelda is an incredibly unique but also remarkably relatable character, which shows how brilliantly original Villeneuve was in (re)creating and inhabiting her. She feels so real and it is a SHOCK to see a photo of the real Martin Villeneuve next to himself in makeup/costume for the role. The ticks, idiosyncrasies, quirks and sheer physicality in his performance seems second nature; maybe he's more comfortable in her skin following the success of his first short that won him a "Best Actor" award.
I smirked while watching the first one but laughed out loud at this one. And that was while watching from home streaming it online. I can only imagine how its comedic energy played in a theater with a live audience.
Only because Martin clearly loved his grandmother so deeply is he able to make light of her complaining about her depressingly lonely situation. He does it in a clever and funny way that we can all relate to being annoyed by our constantly complaining set-in-their-ways grandmothers, who we continue to love and care for as long as they're here.
It's worth seeing if only for the exchange with her son, Lepage, in his notary office where he tells her that his therapist said she is the root of his problems. "See another therapist boy," she retorts.
There's a hint at the depth of Martin's grasp of psychology and philosophy in the film's final poetic scene that ends with Lepage's dialogue over a perfectly framed shot of Imelda. This was reminiscent of sequences in MARS ET AVRIL; filled with poetic dialogue over gorgeous imagery.
