You have to have a strong stomach to get through Se melt, a daring proposition by Simon Lavoie, undoubtedly his most radical since Laurentie, a drama about the identity crisis of a young French-speaking person written and directed with Mathieu Denis. Unless you are fond of Cronenberg-style body horror.
Set in the near future, Se fondre presents a Quebec that has merged into Canada, where the English spoken is closer to Orwellian Newspeak than to Shakespeare’s. Refusing to let this language contaminate our cinema, everything said in English, with the exception of one sentence, appears on cards as in the silent era. The effect is rather comical, then redundant.
In a decrepit prison, Matricule 973 (Jean-François Casabonne, totally invested in his role) is serving a life sentence because of his nationalist ideas. With the complicity of a surface technician (Monique Gosselin), the man shares a giant tapeworm with other political prisoners (Louise Laprade, Guy Thauvette, Luc Morissette, Fayolle Jean and Pierre Curzi), which has the effect to kill them one by one.
Bearer of the memory of the Quebec martyrs, Matricule 973 obtains conditional release from a judge (Jean Marchand). Then the leader of the resistance (Pascale Bussières) and her right-hand man (Sébastien Ricard) arrive.
Filmed in 16mm format, the filmmaker abhorring the homogeneous aesthetics of digital platforms, Blending in has great qualities. The grainy appearance of the photo by Simran Dewan, who had signed the sublime black and white images of Nulle trace, Simon Lavoie’s previous film, gives the whole thing the appearance of a documentary that one would have forgotten in a repository. since the 1970s.
Filmed in the same prison as Michel Brault’s Orders, Melting conveys the memory of the prison dramas of Pierre Falardeau (Le party, February 15, 1839), whose spirit literally haunts the film. Simon Lavoie even allows himself a well-felt homage to Pour la suite du monde, by Perrault, Brault and Carrière. Flirting with anticipation drama, political drama and horror cinema, it also borrows from the essay – notably through the numerous extracts from texts by Anne Hébert, Hubert Aquin and Fernand Dumont that the actors declaim fervently in front of the camera.
But he who kisses too badly hugs. By wanting too urgently to translate his visceral fear of the loss of Quebec identity, its culture and its language, Simon Lavoie delivers a convoluted story with an ambiguous finale. The result is a hodgepodge of outdated political ideas, more indigestible than unusual, in the form of a psychotronic film, whose poor special effects will make some people laugh and others flee.
