CHAOS AND DESIRE (LA TURBULENCE DES FLUIDES) International Feature Competition

Writer/director Manon Briand (2 SECONDS) has said that her connection to water is like that of a pilot to air. In her haunting second feature film, CHAOS AND DESIRE, she turns this possibility into a profound metaphor for the protagonist’s immobilizing detachment from her past.

An ambitious seismologist, Alice (Pascale Bussieres) has been living in Tokyo for three years in an attempt to scrub her past from her memory. She returns to her hometown to investigate the halting of the tides there. In the steamy heat of mid-summer, the town has come unhinged-the townsfolk are odd, a sleepwalking child spends her evenings at a snack bar, and the telephone number of Marc Vandal, a charming water-bomber pilot, has mysteriously been torn from every phone book. The no-nonsense Alice gets pulled into a web of desire and longing.

The film’s imagery is utterly seductive and evocative, governed by its own internal logic. A group of highly engaging performances from Bussieres, Genevieve Bujold (LAST NIGHT, DEAD RINGERS) and Jean-Nicolas Verreault (MAELSTROM), all create clear, likeable characters whose fates weave tightly together.