A head-scratcher of a movie
Director Denis Côté outdoes himself with this beautiful but confusing documentary
Que ta joie demeure (Joy of Man’s Desiring)
μμ Starring: Guillaume Tremblay, Emilie Sigouin, Hamidou Savadogo, Ted Pluviose, Olivier Aubin Directed by: Denis Côté Running time: 70 minutes
Parents’ guide: For all
This is a classic Denis Côté move. The maverick Montreal filmmaker’s previous film, Vic + Flo ont vu un ours, was far and away his highest profile film yet, winning the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival last year and just days ago snaring the Jutra Award for best actress (for Pierrette Robitaille).
So naturally Quebec’s most punk rock of art house auteurs returns with a deliberately obtuse piece, Que ta joie demeure (Joy of Man’s Desiring), that just might be Côté’s least accessible offering so far. And he’s made some pretty inaccessible films!
In fact, this isn’t entirely unexpected. He has often alternated between more expensive, more narrative films like Vic + Flo and Curling and no-budget, shot-onthe-run head-scratchers like Carcasses and Bestiaire. I’ve actually always liked both types of Côté films but he’s really stretched my patience this time ‘round.
Que ta joie demeure is a documentary about menial factory work, though there is no such thing as a straightforward Côté documentary. So throughout he keeps you unbalanced by mixing footage of real-life factory workers and actors essentially giving speeches about life on the factory floor.
As always with Côté, it looks great. Every shot is perfectly framed, with very little camera movement, almost creating painterly tableaus of industrial settings. And the sound is just as carefully orchestrated, by Frédéric Cloutier and Clovis Gouallier, starting with almost heavymetal-like clanging and banging then moving to quieter more pensive moments.
Most of the workplaces on display are older, rundown places where we see people punching holes in metal, taping piles of cardboard boxes together, and making bags of Santropol coffee. There are snippets of conversation, from an absurdist chat about Morocco’s royal family to others talking about the drudgery of their work.
It’s interesting to get a glimpse of a world many of us know little about but Côté is not the kind of filmmaker who’s into explaining what he’s filming or giving it any context. That was fine in Bestiaire, which was shot at Parc Safari, because the images of the exotic animals were so arresting and it somehow created scenes that were more gripping than most films starring humans.
This new film could’ve been a Marxist diatribe on the horrors of drudge labour — just as Bestiaire could’ve been about cruelty to animals — but Côté doesn’t do politics. Maybe there is something interesting and poetic being said about the working men and women. Unfortunately I’m just not sure what the film is saying.