Teenage Mutant Ninja Suicidists

Tout est parfait

They don’t say “Jesus” or even “Jeez” but they say “Christ” instead. It makes sense, “Jésu” does sound too weird for kids to pick it up. Canadian is such an incredibly weird, distant language.

Perhaps distance yet familiarity is what makes this film so fascinating for me. Even though I never had to grieve for anybody, it is a sentiment that, nevertheless, is very familiar to me. Even though I used to be a somewhat suicidal teenager, I have never been into drugs nor any type of clichéd teenage activities. And finally, even though I understand both English and French, the Canadian medley feels close yet far away, just like the entire movie.

Here is where the appeal of this movie lies: It might indulge itself in clichés and take itself very, very seriously, but at the same time, it feels incredibly truthful. Nothing really happens in there, yet whatever happens feels much more real. People kiss in the movie like I did 10 years ago, they drive their parents crazy exactly the same way I did, they have a boring life like most of my life used to be as well. Apart from the suicides, which are shown in a way reminiscent of realistic novels from the 19th century, nothing is dramatized in the film. It is also realistic not to find answers to everything. Even so, the film manages to end on a positive note.

Sure, the film leaves questions open. Except for Sacha who had a sad childhood, it is not truly revealed why the kids did it, but it makes sense that they might even tell the reason in their suicide video letters. It might just as well be for the beauty of the tragedy, who knows. But the real tragedy is that Josh lived on, and the revelation about that is so much more impressive and touching than giving out some satisfying ‘reasons’.

By the way, the girl in the bus from the beginning is such a beauty?

I don’t think there is any right way of dealing with grief, especially in a movie. I thought that “Six Feet Under” did a great job but especially the Nate/Lisa thing got a little over the top dramatic, and “Trois Couleurs: Bleu” was great but for most of the film, we barely saw anything besides Juliette Binoche swimming. This film, in comparison to that, shows so many aspects of the main character’s coping with his world, and despite the slowness of the narration there is a strange richness to it that I liked very much.

The music here is the exact opposite of “Les amours imaginaires”. While that one is primarily ironic and a device to a ridicule scene, the music in this film actually manages to enhance its mood successfully, which I would say is fairly unusual for a rather uncomplicated film like this. It is another sign that shows how well the film plunges into the character’s world, admittedly a world full clichés of teenager-ism where music is its main element.

Another Canadian film with lovely music that I thought I wouldn’t like but ended up enjoying very, very much – that pretty much sums up my impression of “Tout est parfait”. It’s a typical underrated, badly distributed film and I am glad that they exist. How am I going to find the next one?