Ghost Town Anthology is a spirited story. Chris Knight.

Ghost Town Anthology

Do you fear the dead? I don’t mean the walking dead, which everyone should dread, but just the deceased in general. In movies, ghosts are usually portrayed as creatures of terror. But in the real world, we’re more likely to find comfort in the belief that the dead are watching over us.

That’s also what someone says in Ghost Town Anthology, the newest drama from Canadian cinema’s most underrated Denis, Côté. It’s set in a fictional small town in rural Quebec, the kind of place where unemployment, population decline and local malaise suggest a community on life support. After 21-yearold Simon drives his car into a rock, the mayor (Diane Lavallée) delivers a eulogy that almost pleads with the citizens not to follow his lead.

Robert Naylor stars as Jimmy, Simon’s older brother, distraught to the point of denial. He takes to wandering the woods, calling out to his sibling to make contact.

Côté, loosely adapting a novel by Quebec author Laurence Olivier, spends time with many of the town’s 215 inhabitants, exploring grief ’s many shapes. The mayor refuses outside help, certain the community can heal itself, while Simon’s parents retreat into a separate, unreachable sadness. For those less close to the loss, life goes on.

The film, shot in a grey winter and on 16mm stock, echoes the sense of decay. Fifty years ago, Arthur C. Clarke wrote: “Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.” Côté’s haunting in Quebec takes this idea to its logical conclusion, and while it includes some scary moments, its primary emotion is consolation, even solACE.ΣΣΣΣ