Le Marais [The Marsh] (2002)

(In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) A typical criticism of French-Canadian movies is that they often take place on a very literal, very realistic register: They’re often concerned with domestic drama in a contemporary setting, or in realistic depiction of French-Canadian history. Now here comes Le Marais to offer a counter-example: Set in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, it’s a semi-fable about a small village, a semi-accidental death and its coverup ensnaring two eccentric men living near the closest marsh. The film’s images are unusually impressionistic, set in fog and palpable humidity. The plot doesn’t stick to reality as we know it. Actors (and not the usual group that you can see over and over in Québec’s biggest box-office hits) speak in an unusual accent, cultivate eccentricities, and behave with the gravitas that their semi-poetic dialogue requires. Writer-director Kim Nguyen is clearly trying something different. The film may or may not be meant to be taken literally—there are levels of meaning and thematic resonances here … it’s not just a movie about characters living near a marsh. Alas, for all the freedom that the non-realistic approach implies, it’s also a movie that leaves cold: when the end comes, relatively abruptly, I was left with a shrug and no real intention to stay a moment longer in Le marais’s distinct reality.