The Art of Speech

Much of Godin’s purple, declarative dialogue is delivered at a breakneck pace, as though these verbally nimble actors are running lines at auctioneer-speed while simultaneously playing their intentions to the hilt. The film is an exercise in radical compression, its velocity integral to its comic effects, though all the rapid-fire yakking and spastically edited reverse-shot sequences lead to a wordless denouement in which Mésuline searches her pockets for a cigarette in a shot that’s hardly protracted yet still takes up about one-fifth of this taut little film’s runtime. Her pleasure in finally lighting up is fairly adorable.

Fiction bleeds into reality. Women declare themselves pregnant with the letter E! Denzel Washington plays himself in a popular sitcom. Chaos reigns and cops crave poetry. Mélusine Catafor abandons her identity in the city of Three-Rivers to seek a new one in Montreal where she hopes to learn English and where her best friend, Marie-Cobra Tremblay strives to birth an Odyssey. Rosaire, a melancholic pastor, organizes a major conference on Impossible Loves. Also, you'll meet La Renarde who hides a hole-punch in her coat. You'll learn the hole-punch is a formidable weapon used to pierce the ears of alley cats. As you can imagine, it's a comedy.

The blacksmith returns to Montreal with fire and sword. He finds his old shop, now abandoned, and all the memories it holds.

Waiting for April is a romantic, epic cop comedy freely inspired by songs and medieval fables collected by storyteller Michel Faubert. Detective Haffigan investigates a mysterious singing bone, a talisman endowed with dangerous powers, and chased after by a coterie of second-rate outlaws. The bone turns out to be in possession of Mithridate, a seductive actor with a gorilla’s right arm. Haffigan expresses romantic interest in the charming comedian, but he rebuffs her, instead setting his sights on Eleonore, a cashier at the Bank of Permanent Fog, who promises to liberate him from the bone’s curse.

Jazz. Haiti. Plantains.

The Barbarian believes he has only a few erections left before death. Cursed to a life in a thrift shop and haunted by family tragedy, he sets his sights on Marie, an alcoholic special-ed teacher. If he must go, he figures, he might as well go out in good company.

In today's Montreal, the devil, through discreet manners of seduction, takes liberty upon death. A brave trumpet player in love with a damned soul must fight him.

Francis is a taciturn teenager unhappy with his life. Not wanting to stay with is mother, he lives in a foster home in the Laurentian countryside with is guardian, Brian. They spend their days building a bed for Camille, a young orphan soon to be joining them. But Francis wants more: he wants out. As fate would have it, he crosses paths with Bruno, a young gardener who decides to pass the night in the forest.

Lost in Montreal, an American is looking for a missing trumpet player. He begins his search in the apartment of the musician, where he'll meet Melissa, the young woman who lived with the missing man.

That winter in Montréal, there is a girl. Three captains are wooing her. Cinema killed Jean-Baptiste Lamirande, the disastrous Liberator, who comes back to life just before Christmas. Héloïse, an amnesiac actress who lost her watch, has been reported missing.