French and English with English subtitles

14A - Advisory: Disturbing Content.

Quebecois filmmaker Denis Côté returns to CIFF with CURLING, his most accessible film to date and another remarkable achievement in an acclaimed filmography that includes LES ÉTATS NORDIQUES, NOS VIES PRIVÉES, ELLE VEUT LE CHAOS and 2008’s CARCASSES.
Jean-François (Emmanuel Bilodeau) splits his time between cleaning rooms at a derelict motel and taking night shifts at a local bowling alley. These two dead-end jobs provide his only connection to his small Quebec community, and he allows his daughter, Julyvonne (Philomène Bilodeau) even less access. Home-schooled and rarely allowed outside of the home, Julyvonne is everything to Jean-François, and he is everything to her, an entire world of two.
But nothing can last forever and eventually the outside world begins to seep in. Côté portrays this in moments of subtle and unsettling poetry, from Julyvonne’s discovery of and fascination with frozen corpses in the nearby woods to a surreal encounter with a tiger. Through it all, Côté maintains a focus on his two leads, whose real-life family relationship only deepens this intimate portrait of an insular and fractured family.

PH