It’s shot in black and white, it’s subtitled and it’s about a young girl struggling to pick her way through the aimlessness of young adulthood.
The Jasper Film Club’s latest offering, Tu Dors Nicole, might not immediately propel you out of your home to the theatre next month, but critics are calling it one the best films to come out of Quebec in the last few years.
It was also one of the surprises of last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Although it slipped into the festival under the radar, it came away a critical hit.
The film follows Nicole, a twenty-something who’s taking care of her parents house for the summer, and suffering from insomnia. Her lazy summer gets thrown into disarray when her brother and his band show up to record an album in the house, pushing her to confront her inability to sleep and reconsider her uninspired life.
Directed by Quebec’s Stephane Lafleur, it straddles the line between playful and melancholy, plunking the plucky but disturbed Nicole (played by Julianne Côté) into a series of absurd situations, and slipping in enough jokes to keep things light.
Featuring a 10-year-old boy, emboldened to flirtation by his recently broken—and incredibly manly—voice, a surprise visit from an older brother and his terrible, terrible band, and a suspiciously uncooperative bike lock, there are enough moments of quirk and charm to make the trip to the theatre worthwhile.
Tu Dors Nicole is being presented in collaboration with l’Association Canadienne Francophone de l’Alberta (ACFA), as part of Les Rendezvous de la Francophonie—an annual celebration of French language and culture that takes place each March.
Trevor Nichols
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