Une Colonie – Thanks Daddy, thanks Mommy…
Sensitive teen movie shot almost like a documentary, Quebecker director Geneviève Dulude-de Celles’s first fiction feature film was awarded the Generation Golden Bear at the 2019 Berlin film festival. Rightfully !
By Quentin Moyon
Reading time 3 min.
Une Colonie portrays Mylia (Emilie Bierre), a fierce young girl, soon discovering the « Great School”, a hostile place. She meets there Jimmy, a young Abenaki Indian walking beside her in this new world that puts her out of her comfort zone. Une Colonie, true initiatory tell is deeply humane. Humane at the core first. The film’s timelessness and loss of marks makes the message universal. We have all been Mylia, Jacinthe or Jimmy once. We might even still be in our perpetual search of the best social group. Humane at the shape then. The film’s background is no other that Mylia’s face. Close up, stuffy at times, lets us discover her state of mind and experiences from a closer perspective : what is more humane than humans.
The film’s timelessness and loss of marks
makes the message universal.
Genevière Dulude-De Celles, Quebecker director, made it as a documentary : always distant even when the camera is close. A mastered balance not so surprising knowing her previous film, Bienvenue à F.L., was a documentary about teenagers… Her oeuvre seems to be close to Dolan’s Matthias & Maxime themes and aesthetic. Despite all, the film has the few clumsiness expected from a first film, such as some unsubtle metaphors breaking the audience’s suspension of disbelief. But it remains a detail regarding this first directing exercise, fully mastered.
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