La dernière incarnation (2005)

(On Cable TV, November 2022) While “low-budget” is usually not a term of praise when discussing movies, it can carry a number of positive qualities. In discussing La dernière incarnation, for instance, it’s impossible to get away from the idea that the entire thing was filmed around Montréal by well-meaning enthusiasts on a five- or six-figure budget that would be dwarfed by the catering bill of Hollywood super-productions. The film flits from a public park to a depressingly ordinary home to a hilariously down-to-earth car chase sequence to a zesty interlude in a nightclub. Technical credentials are not all that good, the actors (unknown even by French-Canadian standards) are a bit bland and the special effects are from circa-2005 personal computers. Writer-director Demian Fuica is clearly working in the tradition of ultra-low-budget filmmakers everywhere by tailoring his script to what he has on hand, and for French-Canadian audiences the entire thing feels like it could have been shot within a thirty-minute car trip from home. The story, as basic as it is, has to do with a mild-mannered accountant stumbling upon a supernatural figure while bird-watching, and then being gradually brought into an eternal conflict between good and evil. The climactic sequence has good and bad characters making faces at each other, while special effects suggest supernatural combat. But here’s what an excessive focus on the film’s limitations misses: It’s actually quite a bit of fun. Not a classic, clearly, but likable enough (in its obvious limits) to create a perceptible intention to champion the film. There’s a sense that people involved in La dernière incarnation must have been motivated by a dose of fun. (Not necessarily in the drudgery required to film the night scenes or bring the product to completion, but at some point.)  Some of it makes its way on-screen through the film’s satirical intention to confront the sublime with the quotidian, to wring comic moments out of a grand premise, or to maximize their means of production into getting one more sight gag. The actors aren’t all that good, but they have something precious: the ability to make us root for them. I’m acutely aware that this effect rapidly wears off the moment you step outside the loose territory of French Canada (I’m not even sure it’s available in English), but I’ll take it—La dernière incarnation is a fun low-budget film that makes the most of what it has, and creates sympathy where thousands of bigger-budgeted movies have failed to do so.