Oh Canada LLC ARP

CANNES FESTIVAL – Richard Gere is celebrating his big return to the Croisette Oh Canada, alongside Uma Thurman. The feature film by Paul Schrader (American gigolo) competes next to it Megalopolis,BirdOr Types of kindness. The film we saw in Cannes on May 17 is a very clear vision of the death and final confessions of a man who believes he hasn’t said everything. Given that it was presented as a “mystery film” by the Cannes Film Festival itself, we can’t help but think that some parts are missing, especially the corners.

Oh Canada is the free adaptation of the novel Waiver by Russell Banks. The film follows the fate of a man, Leonard Fife (Richard Gere), a former renowned documentary filmmaker and emblematic face of the left, after he illegally immigrated to Canada to avoid conscription during the Vietnam War. Decades later, while dying of a “bad type of cancer,” Léo agrees to speak on camera and tell his life story to former students-turned-documentarians.

But what was supposed to be a documentation of his career becomes, as soon as the camera turns on, the final confession of a dying man destined to destroy his own myth, with his wife Emma (Uma Thurman) as witness. Leonard’s mind is clouded by medication, which is why Paul Schrader decided not to make a linear film. Léo’s memories line up in disarray, sometimes contradicting each other, and little by little the director loses us too.

A kaleidoscope of disjointed slides

Jacob Elordi plays young Leo. The fact that the two actors have nothing in common physically still doesn’t matter. But Richard Gere sometimes breaks into his own childhood memories, adding to our confusion. The sequences follow one another quickly, interrupted by returns to the present, sometimes brutally and for no apparent reason.

Oh Canada LLC ARP

Leonard’s mind is no longer clear, his wife is convinced that he is mixing fiction and reality and that he ” makes up half of what he says “. The viewer also doesn’t know what’s true, can’t sort and recreate the timeline. Jacob Elordi’s mustache (or lack thereof) isn’t enough to guide him. Furthermore, Paul Schrader rightly decided not to select and multiply the image formats. and tone palettes to help us identify different eras. Unfortunately that doesn’t work. If anything, it reinforces the feeling of looking at disjointed slides.

In Oh CanadaLeonard wants to offer a realistic portrait of the man he really was in a filmed testimony. A man full of cracks, far from the hero he long claimed to be. But as his death approaches, he no longer really knows who he is, and we never will.

Oh Canada is a mystery film. But a puzzle for which no one has given us the model and for which many pieces are missing. Not the kind that ends up framed on the living room wall, at least not ours.

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