Roger Frappier

The ugly duckling son of a picture-perfect bourgeois family receives a much-needed dose of self-confidence when he is befriended by a beautiful and capricious stranger in director Stephane LaPointe's festering family drama. Thomas Dufresne (Marc Paquet) isn't like the rest of his family. The offspring of a highly successful father and a razor sharp mother whose keen intellect is widely known thanks to her winning performance on a popular quiz show, twenty-five year old Thomas is as clumsy as they come. When Thomas crosses paths with free-spirited waitress Audrey (Catherine De Lean), it seems as if he has finally found the muse who could truly help him live up to his vast potential. Subsequently praised by his architect teachers for his creative innovation, Thomas finally begins to savor the sweet flavor of success. But Audrey isn't everything she appears to be, and when Thomas finds out the truth behind their "chance encounter" the repercussions that follow may be enough to rend the tenuous seams that hold this family together once and for all. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Inspired by the Japanese drama Himitsu (which was in turn based on the novel by author Keigo Higashino), director Vincent Perez's supernatural drama tells the tale of a mother who discovers some shocking secrets about her teenage daughter after being killed in a tragic car accident and seeing her soul inexplicably transplanted into the body of the troubled young girl. Benjamin (David Duchovny) and Hannah (Lili Taylor) are happily married soul mates, yet neither parent realizes that their adolescent daughter Sam (Olivia Thirlby) is leading a desperate double life. One day, seemingly out of the blue, Benjamin and Sam find their lives changed forever when Hannah is killed in a violent car accident. But at the moment of death, Hannah's soul is somehow propelled into Sam's body, giving the mother a chance to know her beautiful daughter more intimately than she ever did in life. Unfortunately the things that Hannah discovers about Sam are deeply disturbing; Sam has been leading a secret life - a life that neither Hannah nor Benjamin ever knew anything about. Meanwhile, back at home, Hannah and her grieving husband receive one last chance to rekindle their romance and say their last goodbyes. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The return of a long-lost father into the lives of his two grown sons sparks the flame of reconciliation in the sophomore feature from How My Mother Gave Birth to Me During Menopause director Sébastien Rose. Despite the fact that they were both products of the same union, brothers Paul (Paul Ahmarani) and Patrick (David La Haye) couldn't be more different. A self-made, type-A businessman who made a name for himself in the pharmaceutical industry, Patrick lives in luxury with his wife and child while penniless writer Paul battles a lingering case of writer's block while living with his girlfriend in the crowded, ramshackle family home. When father and famed writer François shows up on Paul's doorstep seeking a place to stay, he is hesitantly accepted by his bewildered son. An unplanned family reunion of sorts occurs when Patrick's long-suffering wife sends her husband packing and he too seeks shelter in the family home, and in the days that follow three men attempt to make peace with their tumultuous past and pave the way toward a brighter future. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Chosen to close the Director's Fortnight section of the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, director Jean-François Pouliot's comedy chronicles the chaos wreaked when a small, down-on-its-luck town is seduced by the promise of having a big-time manufacturing plant -- on one unique condition. It seems that the company isn't willing to move to the isolated, Quebec-countryside burgh unless the mayor (Raymond Bouchard) and townsfolk can procure a doctor for them. Salvation arrives in the form of Lewis (David Boutin), a mild-mannered man from Montreal whom the townspeople begin to try to impress, persuade, or otherwise cajole into taking the job. Their methods, however, become so devious -- going so far as to tap the good doctor's phone line -- that they run the risk of being found out, and upsetting their one shot at prosperity in the process. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

Love, death, and fish all mingle in this offbeat comedy-drama from award-winning Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. Bibiane Champagne (Marie-Josee Croze) is the daughter of a well-known fashion designer who dabbles in modeling when she's not busy helping to run the family business with her brother Phillippe (Bobby Beshro). But Bibiane has not been especially happy in her work lately, owing in part to an unexpected pregnancy that led her to have an abortion. Bibiane tries drowning her sorrows in alcohol and drugs, and late one night, after several drinks too many, she hits a jaywalker while driving home. The pedestrian staggers away after the accident, and the next morning, Bibiane remembers what happened and is frightened at the prospect that she may have killed someone. When Bibiane reads a newspaper account the next day of a seafood delivery man who died in his kitchen after being struck by a hit-and-run driver, she's convinced she was responsible for the crime. Guiltily attending the man's funeral, Bibiane strikes up a conversation with his son, Evian (Jean-Nicholas Verreault), and soon the two have become romantically involved, with Bibiane unable to tell Evian her secret. Maelstrom was shown in competition at both the Montreal World Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival in 2000. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Quebec filmmaker Jean-Phillipe Duval debuted with this madcap comedy about a graduate student sucked into Montreal's criminal netherworld. Ph.D. candidate Gilles (Alexis Martin) literally runs into waitress Guylaine (Guylaine Tremblay) at the beach while he is reviewing his dissertation. The two immediately hit it off, and when he returns to his abode in Montreal he heads straight to the low-rent bar where she works. The lovebirds begin talking about the future, until Guylaine's gun-toting brother Bob (Gary Boudreault) staggers to their doorstep after getting worked over by the mob. Fearing for his life, he pleads with Gilles to deliver a message to Matroni, the big boss. On his way to hand off the note, the overly ethical Gilles has a moral crisis: the letter lists names of other soon-to-be-ex-hoods. His actions start a series of bizarre and unforeseen incidents. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

This Canadian film (in French) premiered in the 1999 Sundance Film Festival's World Cinema section. It tells the story of Laurie (Charlotte Laurier) and her love of downhill mountain bike racing. At the start of a big race, Laurie notices a gray hair on her head; her hesitation while noticing this causes her to lose the race by two seconds, forcing her retirement from racing. Angry, she moves to Montreal to stay with her brother, a physicist who is big on loose women and theories of relativity, and she gets a job as a bike messenger. At work, she meets a crusty old man named Lorenzo (Dino Tavarone), who was a champion cyclist himself before settling down and opening a bike shop. Though enemies and competitors at first, they slowly become friends and lovers, and teach each other that time (whether it's 50 years or two seconds) is a relative concept. ~ Arthur Borman, All Movie Guide

In a style evocative of Fellini at his most surreal, this bizarre French Canadian fantasy follows the romance between a young filmmaker and a bearded lady from a local circus during the 1960s. The story begins in a contemporary theater where a projectionist describes, to movie director Rex Prince, the ghostly spirit that seems to be haunting his film. The story then races backward to the 1960s when a half-mad, idealistic Rex was busily making his first film, a Marxist tract depicting poverty in Montreal. Edouard Dore, a well-connected editor works with him and it is he who takes Rex to a carnival late one night to meet the performers in a freakshow. The first person Rex meets is Le Grand Zenon, a hulking one-eyed fellow with the amazing ability to use his eye to project movie images on a screen with neither a projector nor film. Later Rex meets the beautiful but facially hirsute Paula Paul de Nerval. For Rex it is almost love at first sight, so he is therefore upset when, only a few hours after their meeting, she takes off to join a Cajun circus in Louisiana . A few months later, Rex, still obsessed with Paula, races southward in an Edsel to become a human cannonball at the same circus as she. The story jumps back to the present to Rex's latest film "La Comtesse de Baton Rouge," a chronicle of his strange love affair with Paula. Up to this point, the story has been surreal and quite poetic, but as Rex's movie unspools, the film becomes a zany comedy. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide