Jourdain Searles
Oh, Canada, adapted from the novel Foregone by the late Russell Banks, is engrossing and confounding, telling a story that defies simple elucidation. Usually in his films, the mode of confession is the diary. In his most recent films, his protagonists are looking to change their lives in meaningful ways.
Using an overtly erotic visual language that verges on the puritanical, Fargeat bludgeons the viewer, reducing men to slobbering wolves unable to contain themselves in the presence of a youthful woman. The film’s women have no artistic ambition beyond the thrill of being watched and fawned over.
Kinds of Kindness presents us with a world of women living at the mercy of petty men. But the men don’t seem to know what they’re doing either. There’s a childlike nature to all the male characters, driven by the desire to get what they want and be respected in order to keep their egos intact.
Household Saints is about the families lovers come from and the futures they build for themselves. It was a girl-meets-boy story with a “happily ever after” complicated by the wheels of fate.