François Perrusse

(On TV, June 2022) Look: I’ve been honest about how I’m markedly more favourable to local French-Canadian cinema, but my patience has limits, and Les scènes fortuites skated right on the edge of exasperation for much of its running time. A low-budget personal statement from writer-director-star Guillaume Lambert, it’s a film focused on a budding filmmaker who, even in his thirties, seems unable to accomplish anything and has to settle for a single hardscrabble life with a miserable job in the dregs of TV production, perennial conflicts with the rest of his family and psychosomatic illnesses. A narrator (François Perrusse, who also pops up in a minor role later on) tries to contextualize it within a bigger omniscient perspective, but there’s no fooling viewers: this is the kind of aimless quasi-art-house personal filmmaking that quickly becomes as unbearable as its aimless character. A few good sequences set up promising plot line that could have blossomed into an interesting film, but are consciously cut short before they amount to anything. (You keep rooting for the protagonist to hook up with his cute co-worker? But HA, YOU FOOL – NO FUN ALLOWED HERE!)  The ending itself is abrupt and unsatisfying, but by that time we’re not expecting much more than table scraps from Les scenes forfuites. The film makes a lot of meta-comedy out of the protagonist aiming for “an intelligent comedy,” and that’s as pretentious as the rest of this self-consciously frustrating film.