Review: Crying Out

When I was flipping through the TIFF programme book a few weeks ago looking at all the Canadian features, it really seemed like every Quebecois film was going to be a total bummer that would either leave me in tears or depressed for the rest of the day. It’s not that the films sounded bad. It’s just that there wasn’t a funny sounding one in the bunch. Today, I saw two quirky, often hilarious and very touching Quebecois films, proving that you can’t always judge a film by its un-subtitled trailer. A good lesson to learn.

Crying Out concerns three generations of men in a highly disfunctional family. A recent widower who lost his second (considerably younger) wife can’t accept her death, and in a fit of anguish and booze-fueled insanity, digs her corpse up from the cemetary and goes on the road with it in his beat up car. The family sends his troubled son (Patrick Hivon) and his curmudgeonly father (the amazing veteran actor Jean Lapointe) to find and retrieve him. All three men have their issues, and all three drink to absolute excess to avoid dealing with them.

As grandpa and grandson roam the countryside (they are referred to only as “Le Grand-Père” and “Le Fils” in the film) getting drunk together (and the younger of the two picking up a random woman in every place they stop), “Le Père” (Michel Barrette) travels further and further away from civilization and from sanity with his corpse bride, who he’s lovingly bathed and dresssed, and keeps on a pile of ice in the trunk of his car, or on a pile of ice in various motel bathtubs.

The film manages to avoid being depressing as hell by infusing its three leads with the kinds of quirky, lovable characteristics that make them feel like real human beings. Full of flaws, and often very frustrating, but deeply lovable as well. Crying Out has its creepy moments (Le Père running his fingers over his dead wife’s autopsy scars, or simulating breastfeeding with a waitress he meets on his journey) but it’s also truly touching.

Crying Out is the kind of film that makes Quebec seem like a strange, faraway land wrapped up in its own downright depressing brand of magical realism, where everything is totally effed up, but everyone’s able to drink and laugh their way through the tragedies with more style and class than the rest of us.

Not exactly a feel good film, but definitely one of my favourites of this year’s strong Canadian crop.

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