The Fundy Film Society

Tu dors Nicole

A critical hit at Cannes, the third fiction feature by Stéphane Lafleur (Continental, un film sans fusil) once again displays his trademark absurdist humour and sense of ennui, honing in on twentysomethings at an existential crossroads.

Nicole (Julianne Côté, Sarah Prefers to Run) is adrift after her graduation, working a dead-end summer job in her small Quebec hometown and lazing away her evenings with her best pal Véronique (Catherine St-Laurent). Nicole is looking forward to having the house to herself while her parents are away on vacation—until her older brother Remi (Marc-André Grondin, C.R.A.Z.Y.) unexpectedly returns with his bandmates in tow, disrupting the girls’ languid summer. Friendships quickly cool when Remi’s new drummer, JF (Simon Larouche), piques Nicole’s interest, and it becomes clear that something has to—and will—change.

Shot in luminous black and white, Tu dors Nicole is infused with a gorgeously sultry melancholy, particularly in the scenes where the insomniac Nicole wanders her neighbourhood in the middle of the night, marvelling at how much goes on while the rest of the world is asleep. Brilliantly capturing that liminal stage where the fading yet familiar attachments of childhood still seem far more appealing than the sterility of the grown-up world, Tu dors Nicole shows one of our finest young filmmakers at the peak of his powers.

“Lafleur maintains a bouncy, consistently funny tone that you’d describe as featherlight, were there not real weight grounding it all. It’s a near-miraculous trick, and evidence of the immense talent on display here: he has a real talent for making comedy work visually, and as you might expect from a former editor, a sense not just for landing a joke, but for creating a unique and distinctive rhythm.” (Oliver Lyttelton, The Playlist)

“Lafleur delivers an affecting, funny and eccentric—in the best sense of the word—meditation on that in-between state that people in their early twenties find themselves, as they are technically old enough to participate fully in all of life’s activities but they still lack the experience to know what they really want or what’s really good for them.” (Boyd van Hoeij, The Hollywood Reporter)