(Canada, 90 min.)
Written and directed by Onur
Karaman
Starring: Émile Schneider, Roy Dupuis, Julie
Deslauriers, Cansel Elçin, Gilles Pelletier, Dilan Gwyn, Belit Ozukan, Jean
Fayolle
It’s funny to look at two of the Roy Dupuis films reviewed
this year and see how much they encompass the world of Canadian films. In There Where Atilla Passes… Dupuis stars
as Michel, the Québécois father of a Turkish boy named Atilla (Émile Schneider)
who feels a pull away from his father when the directionlessness of his path
makes him reconsider his idea of home. Dupuis plays father to a son in a
similar predicament in this summer’s The Sound of Trees (Le bruit des arbres)
in which his logger papa sees his son Jérémie (Atoine L’ Écuyer) feel a pull
away from the regional homeland and toward the big city of Montreal. The
difference, though, is that Atilla carries a fascination with his native
Turkey, while Jérémie feels restless on the farm, yet both films feature
father/son dynamics in which the idea home no longer holds sway for the young
generation. Be it Montreal or Turkey, these two Roy Dupuis films show Canada as
a site of generational divides.
Both There Where Atilla Passes… and The Sound of Trees also encompass specific branches of Canadian cinema that offer invaluable diversity and representation for a film scene that still sees too many films by and about Toronto. While Trees has a refreshing regional flavour to its slice of life look at rural Quebec (and it’s even better as a look at a life that’s setting with the sun), Atilla makes a notable entry for Canadian cinema by offering one of the first stories—if not the first story—about a Turkish-Canadian looking for a sense of belonging in his adopted homeland of Quebec. Both films are very much about isolation and the dangers of living within the bubble of one community. The boys grow up by looking beyond the borders of their familiar circles.
This drama by Onur Karaman (La ferme des humains) begs comparison to Ruba Nadda’s 2005 breakout
hit Sabah with its urban tale of multiculturalism
and personal awakening. There Where
Atilla Passes… stars Émile Schneider as the twentysomething
Turkish-born/Canadian-bred Atilla, who resembles a cross between Jérémie of Trees and Arsinée Khanjian’s Sabah as he
reconsiders his idea of home by putting his idea of himself as a
Turkish-Canadian into perspective. The change happens at a peculiar time when
his mother Julie (Julie Deslauriers) randomly decides to up and leave the
family home. Left with Michel, who undergoes his own mid-life awakening when
his wife’s departure inspires him to pursue his dream of opening a restaurant, Atilla wonders where exactly he fits in with this Montreal family. He feels
alone, much like his grandfather who lives by himself at a retirement home.
Seeing his grandfather more frequently once Julie leaves, Atilla desires to
hold onto the memories he still remembers as he watches memories fade from his
grandfather’s mind.
Atilla receives a nudge from afar when he gains a Turkish
co-worker Ahmet (Cansel Elcin) at the restaurant where he waits tables and
works as a kitchen hand. Ahmet tries to speak with Atilla in Turkish—that
mother tongue that seems so foreign to him here in Canada. Gradually, with
fewer prompts and fewer retreats to français
as the conversations progress, Atilla confronts the cultural heritage that
lives acknowledged in his life. When Ahmet introduces Atilla to Turkish
exchange student Asya (Dilan Gwyn), his idea of the homeland moves beyond
romanticism into a full-blown long longing to return and begin again.
Atilla somewhat finds himself in Atom Egoyan territory as
his preoccupation with his hyphenated Canadianness leaves feeling isolated and
as if he straddles two worlds. The more Atilla longs to reclaim his Turkey
roots, the more his memories of the past haunt him. Karaman intercuts the film
with flashbacks to Atilla’s mother, a singer, and the traumatic fragments of
memory that exist from his childhood shortly before he left Turkey to live with
Michel and Julie. Returning to Turkey entails a reconciliation with the past,
and the shards of flashbacks collide with Atilla’s own conflicted love for
Michel and Julie. How this young boy determines his own legacy and place in the
world is quite the subtle struggle as he wrestles with his love for a world he
knows only in pieces of memories and with his relationship to a land with which
he feels no connection.
Schneider gives a compelling performance as the young Atilla, while Dupuis is very strong as Michel. (Dupuis is having quite the year
with Atilla, Trees, and The Forbidden Room.) Atilla’s father forms the heart of the film as he longs to bridge
the distance he senses dividing him from his son, and the running theme of the
restaurant and its promise of renewal and family legacy offers a strong
metaphor for the endurance of Michel and Atilla’s family. Gwyn also gives a
likable turn as the radiant Asya, while Deslauriers makes Julie sympathetic and
appealing. The fleeing mother could easily have been a cause for concern, but
the overall theme of the film is one of suffocation and escape. Regardless of
where one calls home, one might always feel a pull to go elsewhere. This drive
is universal and There Where Atilla
Passes… shows that these journeys are opportunities for growth, for one
evolves by expanding one’s horizons. There
Where Atilla Passes… is a modest, moving family drama about the worlds that
divide and unite us.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
There Where Atilla Passes… opens in theatres January 29, 2016.
