Ma Fille, Mon Ange [My Daughter, My Angel] (2007)

(On DVD, January 2008) there’s something hilarious about the film’s self-important message about the dangers of letting your daughter go to the big city. Hard drugs, abusive boyfriends and Internet pornography are inevitable consequences of parental indulgence! The upper-middle-class paranoia of the script plays doubly false given the film’s own titillation factor and goody-goody characters. The murder mystery ends up being a false front for a hypocritical feature-length reactionary tract that resolves itself in a bitterly unsatisfying twist. While the pacing is generally satisfying and the production value hold up well, the film itself is a hollow shell. Too bad; the actors do generally well with what they’re given, and it’s always a pleasure to see Michel Côté get in a fist-fight.