Tout Est Parfait. Out now. (********8/10)
Tout Est Parfait came out August 12th from Alliance Films. It’s a deep, moving, heartbreaking teen film with the abstract feel of some of Gus Van Sant’s best work. It’s a French Canadian film directed by Yves Christian Fournier about a teenage boy who loses four of his friends to suicide. It appears to have been a suicide pact where he was left out. He begins to drift through life (even more than he already was) and hooks up with his best friend’s girl. It’s tough to tell at times which of the characters are alive and which are dead, as he is constantly seeing his friends that have committed suicide. It’s the resolution of this situation that creates the powerful and heartbreaking conclusion.
The lead actors, Maxime Dumontier and Chloe Bourgeois, are terrific. They do a great job of conveying the disaffected confusion of teenagers, and they have many emotionally charged scenes together that are perfectly understated. Their relationship, which is basically one of catharsis through sex, is a typical teenage relationship with this devastating undercurrent. And the adults who play the parents of the dead kids are magnificent as well. One mother has become almost catatonic, another father doesn’t know what to do with himself. But all of them are making half-hearted and confused attempts to reach out to the surviving teenagers, with even more devastating results. Tout Est Parfait is as moving as any Canadian film I have ever seen.