Ghost Town Anthology (Répertoire des villes disparues)
(Canada, 97 min.)
Written and directed by Denis Côté
Starring: Robert
Naylor, Larissa Corriveau, Josée Deschênes, Diane Lavallée, Jocelyne Zucco,
Normand Carrière, Hubert Proulx, Rachel Graton
Snow drifts are scary, but nobody has quite captured the foreboding
nature of snow billowing across the road like Denis Côté does in Ghost Town Anthology. The new and
(expectedly) peculiar film from Côté’s mind proves the director to be one of
the most distinct voices in Canadian film today, although that trait was
already proved with A Skin so Soft, Bestiaire, Carcasses, and Vic + Flo Sawa Bear. Whatever goes on inside his head is the stuff that psychologists
dream about, but for those of us who prefer to probe the mind while sitting in
a darkened movie theatre, Côté’s movies never cease to fascinate. Ghost Town Anthology might be Côté’s
best film yet, and I say this as a passionate fan. It’s a stripped down horror
flick that sends shivers to the bone like a winter chill on a February day.
Ghost Town Anthology serves as a fine companion piece to last year’s Quebecois horror masterpiece Les affamés with its bloody brilliant portrait of rural communities left for dead. The chilling fable feels like something of a departure for Côté despite having all the hallmarks of the auteur’s films. It’s an anomaly as the first adaptation in the director’s oeuvre as he adapts a work of fiction by Laurence Olivier (no, not that Laurence Olivier) about a small town in Quebec, Irénée-les-Neiges, with a population of 215 people. The town’s as empty as the Lightbox on opening night. There is eerie silence and a deep sadness in being in such a big space with so few people, and the sense of isolation can drive a person mad.
That might be the cue that begins the film, as Ghost Town Anthology opens with a car
randomly veering off the empty highway and into a barn. One thing about a death
in a town of 215 214 people is that it affects everyone. The death of
21-year-old Simon Dubé shakes the town, especially since few, if any, of the
inhabitants are younger than the departed man. What hope is there for the
future when an entire generation has died out?
Simon’s death has an understandable impact on his brother
Jimmy (Robert Naylor), who seems equally lost and without hope now that the
local mine is shut for the winter and there’s nothing to do and nowhere to
work. Equally distressed by Simon’s death is Adèle (Larissa Corriveau), one of
the town’s younger residents, but also one with something of a reputation as
the odd duck in town. (They call her “the welfare girl” as a term of
endearment.) Simon and Jimmy’s mother (Josée Deschênes) seems just gutted by
the loss of her son, while her neighbours, Loulou (Jocelyne Zucco) and Richard
(Normand Carrier) do their best to ensure that life goes on, although they both
seem acutely aware of the pointlessness of their remaining days.
Being stuck in a dying town with no future is scary enough,
but Simon comes calling on the townspeople one by one. Things go bump in the
night and bodies appear. The ghosts return in startling numbers and haunt the
town with no apparent motive, cause for danger, or desire to complete
unfinished business. They just hang about in limbo, much like the survivors of Irénée-les-Neiges.
What’s so brilliant about Ghost Town Anthology is that it’s impossible to distinguish the
dying from the dead. The ghosts infrequently appear wearing strange masks—these
things that are a cross between old hockey masks and African tribal masks. It
takes a long time to realize who and what they are (so, sorry, spoiler alert!)
since many of them are sprightly and youthful while the living residents of the
town move with the sedated pace of a shopper at the local Tigre Géant. The
town, strangely, feels more alive when the ghosts are in the frame.
The town’s indefatigable mayor (Diane Lavallée) discovers
that the apparitions in Irénée-les-Neiges are not unique to the area. Small
towns all across the province are similarly haunted, while the big cities are
at peace. Côté delivers a chilling and thoughtful parable about the abandonment
of the rural population as families and communities find themselves devastated by
the changes in a metropolitan society.
The reason why Ghost
Town Anthology might be Côté’s best film yet is that it feels like the culmination
of everything that’s been building in a very eclectic body of work. For a
director who comfortably navigates both drama and documentary, and deftly
blends fiction and non-fiction in hybrid works, Ghost Town Anthology is rooted in realism. It’s creepy as heck, but
the suspense is all generated from Côté’s use of cinematic space and of the
natural environment. Blocking, lighting, and composition are key towards
building suspense, while the 16mm cinematography adds eerily desaturated
palettes: everything looks old, worn, and dying. The pitch perfect performances
of the ensemble cast are equally effective. The actors uniformly submit
themselves to the dark humour of the Côté film and find an essence that lets
the chills hit close to home as viewers consider the fates of these kind
country bumpkins. The off-kilter strangeness that defines his sense of humour
only makes the jumps and chills even sharper, while the aspect of the familiar
is the scariest stroke: we’ve all been somewhere like Irénée-les-Neiges. And
chances are, we’ve left it.
Ghost Town Anthology opens
in Toronto at TIFF Lightbox on March 15.
