Whitewash

Winters in northern Québec are cruel – especially when you’re alone like Bruce (Thomas Haden Church of Sideways fame), a Western-ready tough guy, and especially when one blizzardy night you slam into an inconvenient neighbor with your snowplow and then disappear the body. But although things are not as clear-cut as they seem, the protagonist can take a moment to contemplate what to do next – while hiding out in the forest. That is to say, however much of a bind he’s gotten himself into, he’s got enough ideas and plenty of time to extricate himself from the pickle he’s in. In fact, the less it seems his story will end happily, the more we want to cross our fingers for him. While the picture is conceived as a very dark comedy and although watching the hero in action is quite entertaining, it functionally succeeds in relativizing the issue of his guilt(lessness). He may have messed up a thing or two but it’s not hard to sympathize with him. Bearing a hint of inevitability, the movie benefits not only from the limited space Bruce is forced to inhabit but also from the ambiguity of the situation and the protagonist’s state of mind. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)