Deaf to the City

"Le sourd dans la ville" by Marie-Claire Blais... note to self: must read this book...

Another Canadian film lost in the dusty pages of history despite being part of the selection at the 44th Venice Film Festival. Canada might just have the world's most crowded film graveyard. They've been producing underrated films for decades, and then they don't even remember them.

"Le sourd dans la ville" is an exceptional film with that title. In the film, we dive in and out of the lives of Florence, who moves into a dilapidated hotel in downtown Montreal after her husband leaves her and befriends the hotel owner Gloria (Béatrice Picard) and her deaf son Mike (Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge), and the hotel, the hotel guests. I felt like the morning after a night of cheap wine when the film ended.

I wish such films would somehow be brought back into the spotlight.

PS: Ginette Bellavance and Michel Caron are two miraculous invisible hands that add amazing details to the film.

PS: As this is a Canadian film, some dialogues are in English and the majority of the film is in French... And I can say this; French suits art and literature very well...