LE DEP DELIVERS TENSION
Film set in Aboriginal community
LE DEP
Directed by: Sonia Bonspille Boileau Starring: Eve Ringuette, Charles Buckell-Robertson, Yan England, Marco Collin, Robert-Pierre Côté
Running time: 77 minutes
Sometimes you can make the constraints work to your advantage. That’s exactly what filmmaker Sonia Bonspille Boileau does in her first dramatic feature Le Dep.
Made on a minimal budget, Bonspille Boileau decided to keep the costs under control by shooting in a single location, at a dépanneur/gas station in a fictional aboriginal community. The entire film takes place in and around the dep over the course of one night.
That lack of movement could snuff out some films. But not Le Dep. Instead the claustrophobic atmosphere just adds to the tension here, upping the intensity big-time for this compelling drama. It helps that the two lead actors are so good.
Eve Ringuette plays Lydia, the woman who’s working the cash at the store, and she’s nothing short of a revelation. There is a real force to her performance. She’s in pretty well every scene, other than the flashbacks, and she brings a quiet intensity to the screen.
Charles Buckell-Robertson is also very good, bringing nuance and range to his portrait of a drug addict who decides the best way to find the four grand he needs to pay his dealer is by robbing the dep.
At the start, Lydia is set to end her shift at the convenience store but it turns out the woman who was to do the night shift has bailed. Lydia’s father Serge (Marco Collin) asks her to do the shift and he tells her she’ll have to prepare the cash to give customers in exchange for their welfare cheques the next day. He gives her $50,000 in an envelope. Her boyfriend, Jérôme (Yan England), is the local cop, a nonaboriginal.
At first, it’s a pretty dull evening. The big excitement is when a drunken guy Régis (Robert-Pierre Côté) stumbles into the store.
But then this unhinged guy in a balaclava and wielding a pistol shows up on the scene and things get serious.
On one level, it works simply as a tight minimalist thriller. But Bonspille Boileau also manages to weave in a rich family drama and take a look at a bunch of social issues. It’s really almost a two-hander and it works as well as it does largely thanks to the stellar performances by Ringuette and Buckell-Robertson.