Jaloux

Jaloux‘s claim to fame (and presumably the only reason it’s playing at the festival) is the fact that it was evidently improvised from start to finish, and although the final product does possess a polish that is admittedly rather surprising, there’s little doubt that the film suffers from a pervasively uneventful and thoroughly tedious atmosphere that ultimately proves disastrous. The thin storyline follows bickering married couple Thomas (Maxime Denommée) and Marianne (Sophie Cadieux) as they arrive at a friend’s cabin hoping to reconcile their differences, with problems ensuing as a mysterious stranger (Benoît Gouin’s Jean) begins to slowly but surely ingratiate himself into their lives. Filmmaker Patrick Demers does a fairly decent job of establishing the characters and the situation, although it’s clear right from the get-go that one’s efforts at forming any kind of attachment to the characters are thwarted on an all-too-consistent basis. There’s never a point at which Demers is able to transform any of these people into wholeheartedly compelling figures, as we learn preciously little about their pasts or what drives them to do the things they do. (This proves to be particularly problematic in the case of Gouin’s character.) And although Demers has punctuated the proceedings with a few attention-grabbing elements (eg what’s the deal with that guy tied up in Jean’s cabin?), Jaloux primarily comes off as a frustratingly (and aggressively) pointless endeavor that proves improvisation is best left to comedy sketch shows.

**1/2 out of ****