I saw this true piece of cinematic art in a special Canadian selection of short films at the 66th Berlin Film Festival. Of all the screenings I attended to on this occasion, this one ended up leaving me with the strongest impression; a dark, subtle, and slightly twisted look at my homeland of Québec with all the weight of its history, and confused identity. A film which I surely wish would represent its makers' nation abroad for a long time.
The setting of "What Remains", although quite simple, is of the cleverests. A bunch of bums cut down a tree on an hermit's property at night by simple thirst of adrenaline, not realizing fully the true implications of their gesture. Their jest wakes up the secluded man's demons, and this one embarks in a journey that will ultimately lead him to come to terms with his old ways. All of this conflict, in the film, is underlying to the fascinatingly beautiful images produced in the most skillful manner. The evolution of the characters throughout the following days has no choice but to leave an attentive member of the audience breathless. A these days rare stoicism in the mise- en-scène accompanies "A class" acting from even the smallest roles, as well as true craftsmanship from every department.
This is solid writing. You rarely get such a stripped down, yet rich, and refined story with a such a compact medium. The film is under half an hour long and the emotion emanating from those brief scenes equates masterpieces of elaborate and, admittedly, sometimes tiresome developments. It feels like a couple of weeks, perhaps a month or two, and one re-emerges from this excursion in the depths of humanness elsewhere completely.
