Fifteen years after West of Pluto, directed with Myriam Verreault, Henry Bernadet once again plunges into an adolescent microcosm with his second feature film, Gamma Rays. If his previous work was interested in the daily life of young suburbanites, this one focuses more on those of the Saint-Michel district, in Montreal.
And what’s so different about these two collections of characters? That of Saint-Michel discusses cultural identity, experiences systemic racism and comes up against the vagaries of immigration. But not only. It is also about electromagnetics, philosophy and great moral dilemmas (“Is it worse to cheat on your girlfriend or your barber?”)…
Filmed in an almost documentary style, this refreshing proposition invites us into the daily lives of Fatima (Chaimaa Zinedine), Toussaint (Chris Kanyembuga) and Abdel (Yassine Jabran), the three vectors of this skillful choral film. While Abdel tries to endure his cousin visiting Montreal, Fatima sets out to move away from crime, which nevertheless allowed her to envisage a rich destiny. Toussaint, for his part, maintains a telephone correspondence with a mysterious Laval resident, whose number was found in a bottle washed up on the banks of the Rivière des Prairies.
Co-written with Isabelle Brouillette and Nicolas Krieff, the scenario of Rays gamma suffers from inconsistency. The transition from lively dialogue to conventional and unnatural replies destabilizes and lessens our enthusiasm. The calls between Toussaint and Maude, for example, sometimes give the impression of being nothing more than a collection of meaningless sentences, exchanged by two strangers whose origins of the emotional connection escape us.
Nevertheless, there are also real gems in this film, supported with sensitivity by non-professional actors who do an excellent job. The bold narrative structure, articulated around the symbolic reference to gamma rays, leads to a profound reflection on the invisible bonds that human beings weave between them and on the impact of social and family dynamics on adolescents.
Like a spiritual sequel to West of Pluto, Gamma Rays is a captivating fresco about adolescence that does justice to the complexity of this time of life. And which stays far away from the caricatured representations that are too often reserved for young people.
