8/10
Minimalist
26 April 2008
"Continental--un film sans fusil" has a character who's a night clerk in a exurban highway motor-hotel. "Do you get bored", she's asked. "I like it quiet." And similarly in this film of hotel rooms, houses, kitchens, teeth, dances, buses, things are tidy, it's "nice," even when there's a risk of being a bit wild. The police have nothing to report, don't call. What do you do when a baby is being goo-gooed and it starts to cry? When a bed is thumping in the next room? Everybody's getting older, and at the end of the subdivisions, where the bus line ends, there are woods.

The story, the widescreen framing by Sara Mishara, the dialogue maintain the aesthetic of reduction. Is this a Canadian aesthetic? Look up a painting from English Canada by Alex Colville called "Pacific," where there *is* a gun on a table, and also a ruler.

I can't by the way see the "sibling connections" someone else claims. There's one couple together, another that phones, a third that may get together again, some who may need life insurance, and people who go out to practice the Continental.

This is a perfect movie for what it is.
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