Quebecois filmmaker Denis Côté makes an unassuming, unabashedly regional kind of cinema, drawing on the rhythms and landscapes of his native province. It’s taken him a long time to get attention south of the border – I had to travel to the Toronto Film Festival to see his first film, Drifting States. He seemed to have a breakthrough of sorts in the U.S. with Curling, which at least got some attention on the festival circuit and was acquired by New Yorker Films, who never released it. Bestiaire, a semi-documentary shot in a Montreal zoo, got him more attention, and Vic […]
by Steven Erickson on Feb 4, 2014(Bestiaire had its World Premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. It is being distributed theatrically in America by KimStim and screens in L.A. at the Cinefamily, Feb. 21 – 27, 2013. ) The first animals we see in Bestiaire are humans, observing something with great attention. The scene resolves in a funny anti-climax: it’s revealed that they’re sketching in an art class, and all that intense focus is directed at a small, taxidermied deer. By starting his film looking at the viewer, director Denis Côté suggests that what we’re about to experience will be as much about ourselves and […]
by Paul Sbrizzi on Feb 21, 2013