“Foreign” films turn out to be either interesting, weird, or meaningful.
Today I checked out a French Canadian short film called Le Chevreuil (the deer). I honestly don’t know what to say about this one. The movie starts out with a drug addict named Marc preparing for a funeral while smoking assorted stuff in a bong. When Marc offers to drive the hearse, his brother Bruno refuses, saying Marc just messes things up. After their mother tells Bruno to let Marc do it, Bruno reluctantly accepts and gives Marc the key.
Marc of course messes things up, being the incompetent guy he is, still driving around and running late. Unable to focus on the road due to his smoking and clearly obvious A.D.D, Marc ends up hitting a deer (at least that’s what the title is) and suddenly notices the coffin’s gone out the back door and down a hill. Shortly after falling down the hill, Marc finds the coffin along with the deer he hit, and tries to lug the coffin back up the hill. Suddenly, he realizes the body somehow went missing.
Things don’t get any better when he hears a familiar voice from the top of the hill. When Marc sees the family, he realizes he’s in some serious trouble. Everyone gets the coffin back in the hearse and heads off. One can only imagine how the funeral goes from there.
It’s amazing what the cinematographer was able to shoot on a snow-covered road in the mountains. The scenery was just amazing. The exterior dialogue was hard to hear, but that’s only a minor complaint since there wasn’t much of it and everything was subtitled anyway.
I personally found this short film to be kind of dark. Not only that, but the coffin scenario had me somewhat confused. The ending was a bit out of place but some people might find it funny. I guess I still need to observe Quebecois humour some more to understand it.