Guy Édoin

(On TV, July 2022) The world of movies is vast enough that even avid cinephiles can miss intriguing titles, and somehow it took me seven years to notice a French-Canadian film featuring no less than the divine Monica Bellucci. That’s not as much as an incongruity as you’d think—Bellucci is fluently trilingual, has often dubbed her own characters, and can boast of memorable appearances in films made in Italy, France and Hollywood. Considering this, it was only a matter of time (and budget) until she made her way to Montréal. In Ville-Marie (the original name for the colonial settlement that became Montréal, now used to designate one of the city’s central boroughs), she doesn’t stretch very much by playing an international movie star coming to Montréal for a film shoot. Alas, she’s nearly the only interesting thing about the result. Writer-director Guy Édoin goes for a delicate slice-of-life ensemble drama here, where all characters are connected in surprising ways in the wake of an opening tragedy. Unfortunately, the result falls far from its potential: the bits of interest are unevenly distributed, the characters remain enigmatic, and the moments feel disconnected even when they’re meant to cohere. The film-within-a-film in which Bellucci’s character comes to play is an over-lit Sirk-like melodrama that’s meant to symbolize character growth but usually falls flat. Some moderately interesting elements (such as the film ending with characters driving out of Montréal) keep the result from being a complete disappointment, but Ville-Marie ends up being far less than what its individual components suggest. Maybe it deserved to be a miniseries. Maybe it didn’t need to exist. Certainly, Bellucci deserves better.