Listening to Others: On Antoine Bourges’ Fail to Appear

It starts with a photocopier in a dimly lit supply room: a fax is slowly being printed out with the report of a young man Eric (Nathan Roder) who has been charged with theft and who’ll need a social worker. The fiction begins and throughout Fail to Appear it’ll continue onward through subtle visual details in a setting that’s actually the one that it’s exploring. Antoine Bourges’ project, just like it was in his earlier East Hastings Pharmacy, is to use fiction to better articulate some of the world’s realities. To not simply document but to slow things down, really focus to better see and to think with the changes occurring around us. It’s at this formal level that Fail to Appear is really interesting. It’s the story of a young social worker Isolde (Deragh Campbell) trying to help her patients while also learning the tasks and responsibilities that go with the job. The great idea here is to cast someone unfamiliar with the milieu so that you can see the struggle to keep up, that of a mixture of care and confusion, eagerness and awkwardness. The film’s exploration of the world of social workers and its client’s matches the beginner’s journey that Isolde is going through. Then there’s the opening of the film up to the real world: there are the clients and other practitioners, its offices and community centres, courtrooms and neighbourhood surroundings. The world keeps intruding onto its fiction so that the film never ends up being self-contained. Its style also adds to its contemplation as the long-take form allows for the scenes to play out for as long as it’s necessary – for a person to say what they need to say, and for them to properly represent themselves – and its framing and stillness distils an emotion into the people that it portrays. Fail to Appear perfectly blends art-house cinema techniques with observational documentary and conceptual photography. It imagines a new way to look at the relationships between people and how they interact with their surroundings. If the actors in Fail to Appear remain somewhat impenetrable, whose motivations are never really clear, it instead proposes a good first step on how to create positive changes in people: that of listening and caring about others. So it is only after Isolde, who had already helped Eric avoid his charge, sent him a kind email that he would start to participate more in his family’s life. The film proposes that change and affect takes place at the level of these small gestures and how these can have a lasting positive influence. And in a province that overnight, with the Ontario elections, became a majority conservative government it’s even more vital to have these reminders of the personal struggles of the already underappreciated health care and social worker professionals and the people that they serve. It’s time to not turn away.

The MDFF Interview by The Seventh Art

The Seventh Art is a new video-magazine, based out of Toronto, that conducts extended interviews with leading local and world filmmakers – inspired, in style, by the French television show Cinéastes de notre temps – and produces high quality video-essays. The Seventh Art recently conducted a long interview with the guys at MDFF – Dan Montgomery, Kazik Radwanski and Antoine Bourges – where they discuss with them everything from their creative process, production, distribution and their films East Hastings Pharmacy and Tower. Christopher Heron, the lead interviewer of The Seventh Art, also made a video-essay about Radwanski’s MDF Trilogy - Assault, Princess Margaret Blvd. and Out in that Deep Blue Sea (“The films of the MDF trilogy all deal to a variety extent to a protagonist in crisis…”) – which is one of the special features on their handmade DVD.

Some interesting comments from the Seventh Art interview includes when Radwanski discusses how he was first drawn to cinema,

“I remember that for a few years in high school when I was really depressed. That I sort of fell in love with cinema. When I think why would anyone want to watch the films that I’ve made. I think back of myself in high school and how I would watch this, […] and feel compassion.”

Radwanski’s comments how the Canadian film tradition of the documentary influenced his work,

“When I’m looking at Canadian cinema, what I would draw from it is documentary. Even when I was younger and trying to figure out what direction to go, it was definitively Canadian documentary. Allan King, directors like that. For sure, that Canadian tradition. But at the same time, with documentary, it was more a feeling that I like, a feeling, a texture.”

Here is the full MDFF interview by The Seventh Art:

You’re supposed to build the city, not deconstruct it. (The films of Antoine Bourges)

The Canadian filmmaker Antoine Bourges’ first short film Hello Goodbye (2008) follows the foreign exchange student Park (Joshua Pak) on his first and final day of university. At the beginning Park has trouble making friends and then, on his last day, he has trouble saying goodbye. “All good things come to an end,” he murmurs. In this fifteen-minute short film, like in life, everything goes by too quickly. What stands out in Hello Goodbye is how Bourges films the first and last day. The different time periods are filmed as if it was the same scene with the transition shot between them being seamless: you see Park arrive in his classroom where he meets a girl and starts to unpack his things and, in the same shot after she leaves the frame, Park starts putting his things away in the box as the girl returns, now wearing winter clothes, talking about how quickly the year went by and she returns to him a couple of DVDs that he leant her. Park sees his student organizer, who he will present his final architecture project as a gift, and has one last game of foosball with a friend. The ambient score by Patrick Beechinor is trance-like and Beechinor, who is also the cinematographer, shoots in a style that is geometrically composed where Vancouver is presented as a bustling metropolis - a dynamic background to this somber story.

This invisible transition from ‘Hello’ to ‘Goodbye’ might be the key to look at Bourges next couple of films: Woman Waiting (2010) and now in his latest pharmaceutical hybrid-fiction East Hastings Pharmacy (2012). Where in Hello Goodbye the year at the University of British Columbia (which Bourges also attended) is passed over. In his next two films Bourges takes this ‘in-between’ time and makes it the focus. As he captures people that are in search of something whether it is when they are between homes and searching for a new apartment or during their daily visit to a methadone clinic. What Bourges seems to be doing is trying to find action within inaction. Where Bourges' Hello Goodbye resembled the photo-conceptualist work of a Jeff Wall which emphasized long takes and open spaces, his more recent works are micro-narratives of people in institutions, like the documentaries of Frederick Wiseman and Allan King, with a Pedro Costa-like sense of hybridizing fiction and non-fiction through documenting grim social realities.
*****To describe Bourges filmmaking process on East Hasting Pharmacy here are my translations of Bourges’ answers from a Cinéma du Réel interview between him and Stéphane Gérard.

On these methadone pharmacies:

“They interest me because they are ideal places of observation on the everyday life of the neighborhood [East Hastings, Vancouver], one of the poorest in North America, with a high rate of criminality and prostitution. Everything is organized for these residents: the neighborhood is isolated, the people don’t leave and the pharmacies are the only place they check into everyday.”

On how Bourges filmed East Hastings Pharmacy:

“I decided to create a replica of a real pharmacy and to have my own space, so now I had the possibility to work with a tripod, and I no longer had to follow people or hide, because I could control the place. At the beginning I wanted to film in long-shots a bit like Depardon but I realized that I couldn’t because of this glass window. I could not get between it and that you are either on one side or the other, and that because of this you inevitably have to pick a side. The shot / reverse-shot formula was functional. It wasn’t so much a demanding condition instead it was the default.”

On the actors:

“The visitors are all patients of the neighborhood, I met them in the pre-production of the film. I asked them to go to the counter where they would ask for their dose of methadone and to act as they are used to. It was them that guided things because it is them that have the experience, I relied on them.”

*****“When a patient is prescribed methadone, he or she must attend a pharmacy that is open every day of the week. In most cases, the directions on the prescription will indicate that the dose is to be dispensed daily, and that the consumption should be witnessed by the pharmacist.” – Pharmacy Methadone Maintenance Guide, College of Pharmacists British Columbia.

This inter-title that opens East Hastings Pharmacy is a good enough starting point to discus what goes on at a methadone clinic. Some further information (though I’m not passing myself as an expert): methadone, or dolophine as it’s also known, is a designed psychoactive chemical to be used medically as a painkiller as substitute for harder drugs, like heroin. Although it perpetuates physical dependence, the goal is to provide a clinically supervised, stable dose of a particular opioid in order to provide a measure of control to both pain and cravings.

In East Hastings Pharmacy you see a varied group of patients coming in, on several different days, for their daily dose of methadone. The young, plain-faced pharmacist (Shauna Hansen) works with the older pharmacy technician (Luis Figueroa) who provides her with the properly measured quantity of pills and liquid. The film begins in the morning as you see Shauna on her cell phone sitting behind the counter as you hear the door rattling and the people outdoors laughing. The pharmacy is a site of rituals and procedures, repeated interactions and slight differences, things going smoothly and confrontations. One patient says to the pharmacist regarding the television that plays cartoons and the news, “You seem to watch the same show every day?” And the pharmacist responds, “Well, we don’t have too many options here, unfortunately.” Some of the events that happen include: one woman, who wants to have her medicine to go (“carries”) so that she can spend more time with her son, is told again that the pharmacy can’t do that as she has lost that privilege. Another patient, who appears to be of upper-middle class, easily picks up ‘carries' and then he goes out to enjoy the nice weather. Another patient is bargaining for some methadone, as her prescription didn’t account for one day. While another patient gives the pharmacist a hard time to use the phone, which she does not have permission to share.

The cinematographer Lindsay George creates succinct images: that of close-ups of hands picking up pills and drinking from a cup, and shot / revere-shots of the patients and the pharmacist. The pharmacy is a medium-sized open white room, which is a little scuffed. It includes a few plastic-and-steel chairs and a water-tank. The people that come through it are varied and include men, women, first nations etc. The visitors are given the space to speak for themselves, which gives this unscripted film a level of authenticity. You can hear one of the guys sharing his life philosophies: “Or you can say, you know what, I had enough, I want to do something positive.” And no one is ever identified, except for during the credits, which gives the film a universality, as if this is happening all of the time in most urban centers.

What East Hastings Pharmacy achieves is a clear-eyed and objective look at a methadone clinic. As Mel Hurtig brings up in The Truth About Canada there are problems in Canadian national healthcare. And as Rachel Giese brings up in her article The Errors of Their Ways (The Walrus, April 2012), on the death toll of medical mistakes (“Yet as the tools for healing proliferate, so do the difficulties in determining and executing correct diagnoses and treatments; each discovery creates new opportunities for mistakes, side effects, and dangers.”); there is much to be gained from improved protocols, teachings, and decisive action. There are people’s quality of life and lives depending on it.

East Hastings Pharmacy will have its Canadian premiere on Monday April 16, 7PM at Jackman Hall as part of the program A Place in the World at the Images Festival. And can be seen online at the mubi website during the festival.

MDFF Reviews (Green Crayons, Woman Waiting)

“In my opinion, there aren’t big or small subjects [for film], because the smaller the subject is, the more we can treat them with grandeur. In truth, there is only truth.” – Claude Chabrol

Kazik Radwanski’s Green Crayons is the captivating story of two elementary school children, an Indian Canadian kid Xavier (Raj Manav) and his Caucasian friend Liam (Kaiden Wiliams), who have to deal with the consequences of spitting on each other in class. At first glance the story appears sweet as the two children are in a classroom; in the background there is one of those inspirational posters that says “Be Generous” and they are browsing through books with cute titles like “Dog” and “Big Cats”. It unexpectedly takes a turn towards an impromptu spiting battle between the two until this catches the attention of the teacher who only sees Liam spitting and sends him to the principal’s office. The rest of the ten-minute short film deals with Liam's shame due to that the principal is going to have to call his parents and Xavier’s guilt of getting his friend in trouble. The green crayon of the title refers to the Crayola writing instrument used by Liam to fill in the third square on his notebook, which means that the principal will have to call his parents. He is asked to fill in the square several times before he does so reluctantly. The grandeur of how this scene is treated reaffirms the above Claude Chabrol quote and has the intensity of the young Jean-Pierre Léaud police interrogation in Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959). The films emotional core comes from Xavier realization that he should look out for his friend. During recess, Xavier plays slapsies with this girl in the playground. He twists her arm, and slaps her in the face. You can tell there is something else eating him up. He spies through the crack of the door at the principal office to see how Liam is doing. Back in class, he rubs Cheez Whiz all over his face as a ploy to go to the washroom. On the way back in the hallway he looks at his notebook and only sees the one green square on it and afterwards he walks up to the main office door. His friend pulls him away. And when he fesses up to his teacher, her verdict is to give them both green squares; “I don’t want to give you a green square, how does that make you feel?” she says. There is no resolution, it ends with each student being more divided and a worst situation then they started. Similar to the mute elementary school children who at such a young age can define atrocities in Michael Haneke’s Code inconnu (2000), the problem facing the kids in Green Crayons is not intrinsic within the children but with the teachers and principals, especially their method of regulating the children’s behavior through a three-strikes-and-your-out approach to anti-social behavior and a one-sided approach to communication. Who knows what is next for these two little boys, outside there is a birch tree with its green leaves blowing in the wind.

Kazik Radwanski is the writer and director of four short films: Green Crayons (2010), Out in That Deep Blue Sea (2009), Princess Margaret Blvd. (2008), and Assault (2007). Film critic Jason Anderson in the Toronto star wrote “[Kazik Radwanski is] one of the most exciting local filmmakers yet to make a feature…”.
*****Antoine Bourges’ Woman Waiting is the story of a middle age woman, Jane (Carmen Casanova), who is searching for assisted housing in Vancouver, British Columbia in the month of January 2010. During the day she runs into many complications but what is truly generous of the storytelling are the few moments of well-deserved relief and humanity. Jane gets to relax with a coffee, a nice gym receptionist gets her a free one-week membership, and she runs into a friendly woman in a buildings waiting room. Woman Waiting is Beckettian fable that hawks back to Waiting for Godot as the new apartment is always beyond Jane’s grasp and the absurdist touches like toenail clipping episode, desolate grey apartment, and the distinct looking actors further emphasize the films strangeness. There is something about Jane that is similar to Orn (Jenjira Jansuda), the old woman in Apitchatpong’s Blissfully Yours (2002), as the two women are old, express loss and frailty through their physical appearance and dress, and both movies showcases them in fat two-piece bathing suits while swimming. The cinematography by William Fritzberg frames the actors to best showoff their individual characteristics and the swimming pool scenes gleam as a place of solace. It is no surprise I saw Antoine during TIFF 2010 leaving a Kelly Reichardt Maverick Series as Woman Waiting closest antecedent is Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy (2008) as they are both about marginal women, grim social realities, and a constant feeling of displacement.

Antoine Bourges’ is the writer and director of two short films: Woman Waiting (2010), and Hello Goodbye (2008).

The company Medium Density Fibreboard Films (MDFF) was founded in 2007 by the producer Daniel Montgomery and the director Kazik Radwanski; www.mdff.ca.