Blu-Ray review: Café De Flore

With the seven day cycle rolling around once more here in the city of Toronto, we are looking at yet another new release Tuesday as all the video stores across the city are stocking up with all the latest and greatest releases on DVD & Blu-Ray from Hollywood and elsewhere. Out today from our friends at Alliance Films is one of the most stunningly beautiful and emotional films of last year that came from our neighbors in the province of Quebec. After a feature run at the most recent edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, a successful theatrical run, multiple Genie nominations and being named one of Canada’s Top Ten films of the year by TIFF it is now available on DVD & Blu-Ray for everyone to enjoy. Get ready to experience “Café De Flore”.

“Café De Flore” is a love story about people separated by time and place but connected in profound and mysterious ways. The film chronicles the parallel fates of Jacqueline (Paradis), a young mother with a Down syndrome son in 1960s Paris, and Antoine (Parent), a recently-divorced, successful DJ in present day Montreal. What binds the two stories together is love, in all its euphoric, obsessive, tragic, youthful, and timeless forms and shows us that a broken heart can sometimes take a life time or two to repair.

Not an easy film to sum up by any means, but director Jean-Marc Vallee who burst on to the scene with ‘C.R.A.Z.Y.’ in 2005 and also working on the main stream side with ‘The Young Victoria’ in 2009 is quickly garnering a reputation as a director to keep an eye on. The themes of love are always difficult to quantify, but the act of love or balancing the levels of one’s love, either a new relationship or between family members is an intense, grueling and occasionally confusing experience. With his beautiful marriage of music and visuals, this comes through in immaculate detail giving the entire experience an ethereal feel as the shared collective musical memory of everyone involved makes you feel as if you are living in a waking dream. Beautifully shot by Vallee and cinematographer Pierre Cottereau; both present day Montreal and 1969 Paris feel vibrant and rich, with the music and visuals playing in concert with one another to absolute perfection. A film that is very much an immersive experience, you simply need to let yourself get swept along for the ride.

Vanessa Paradis as the young mother Jacqueline dealing with the needs of her Down syndrome child delivers a stellar performance. As she struggles against the cruel world that endeavoring to give her young son as normal an upbringing as humanly possible was captivating and heartbreaking, when her son meets a new classmate who also has Downs, it is love at first sight for the two youngsters and as they become more and more inseparable this becomes jealousy which threatens her very existence right down to the core. As the global hopping DJ Antoine; Kevin Parent (In his first screen role!) lays bare all the emotional baggage that is on the table during his divorce, when he alienates his first love and soul mate along with their two kids in favor of his own happiness and his new love who also happens to be his soul mate. Those situations are never supposed to be easy, but quite often the circumstances of individual happiness can be overlooked on how they affect the bigger picture; Parent managed to bring that confusion of loving two people at the same time to the surface in an enthralling performance.

The picture quality on the Blu-Ray wasn’t necessary pristine, as even through the film was shot digitally it did have a little of that 35 mm grain on it, but everything looked fantastic and the sound was immaculate since this is a movie designed to be played loud in order to really sink the viewer into this world.

Ranked by yours truly as the best film of 2011; “Café De Flore” is a stunning experience that puts all filmmakers (especially Canadian ones) on notice that the bar has officially been raised. And now that it is available on DVD & Blu-Ray it just may be the best film a lot of people see in 2012.

5 out of 5 stars.

“Café De Flore” is available at video stores across Toronto; click here for a list of some of the finer stores near you.

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