Le Neg'

The DVD interface amazed Joe and I immediately, consisting of a stop-motion animation clip from the movie that was one of the most original ideas I'd seen in quite some time. It looked like plastic toy figurines moving around a toy farm set. But then, their eyes moved, making us realize with a shock that they were humans in costume and make-up. Wow!

If you're not familiar with the work of Robert Morin, all I can say is, you should be! His classic film Yes Sir! Madame... is a classic of faux-mockumentary fiction, exploring the bi-personality of growing up Franglais in Montreal. He often uses video to heighten the soap-operatic dramas that build to violence, and fractured storylines and POVs. Le Neg' is an intense, Rashomon-like story of one night of violence, reconstructed through the POVs of each of the participants, whose stories, of course, contradict each other while giving more and more details as to the climactic scene of horror. The story follows a police investigation into the assault on and torture of a young black kid after he defaces a lawnboy, which ultimately leads to the shooting of the elderly woman who owned it. One of these POVs is from that of an autistic boy who has his walkman on all the time, listening to a beautiful song "Donnez-moi des roses" by Fernand Gignac. The racism is intense, at times verging on too much, and hard to take, but at the same time, not too explicit. The characters are, to their credit, full of surprises, becoming less and less stereotypical and flat as the film progresses, though more and more cruel. A harrowing, but powerful Quebecois film.