8:17 P.M. DARLING STREET (CHRISTAL FILMS, 2003)

By Rick Jackson

Written and directed by Bernard Emond, this is a haunting story of one man's introspective look at his life while waiting for his girlfriend to come back home. Told in flashback, he begins with the accident that saved his life. While driving home in his car he decides to tie a shoelace and ends up crashing into another vehicle driven by a Chinese man. At the very moment of the crash, an explosion demolishes the building he lives in.

Luc Picard gives a strong performance as Gerard, an ex-reporter and member of Alcoholics Anonymous. In a monotone voice, he relates his inner demons and how fate has left him wanderlust for answers about the existence of God and why he should have survived the explosion. When he learns a four-year-old girl had died, he wishes he could have traded places with her. Early in the film, he tells us, "There's something profoundly insulting about owing one's life to an untied shoelace."

Moving back to the same neighbourhood in Hochelaga where he grew up, he is determined to keep looking for those answers. His investigation takes him to Outremont, Maniwaki and Quebec's south shore.

Interspersed throughout the narrative are Gerard's thoughts. Divorced three times and a liar, cheat and a thief, the bottle was his only friend for 25 years. At one moment during his journey of self-discovery he goes on one last binge. He visits Madame Caron (Marika Boies), a disabled woman whose cheating husband died in the fire. Her lack of remorse echoes the mood of the entire film. As he cradles the bottle in the front seat of his car, life becomes meaningless once more as all of his pain goes away with each swallow. The look of contentment on his face resembles a dead man in his casket.

Picard literally puts you in a place where darkness continues to plague his very existence. His inner demons lash out in that one last binge where he says all tacts gets lost once you've taken a few drinks. The next moment you see him getting into trouble with a gang of thugs when he steals some of their antlers.

Emond's latest reminded me of Ingmar Bergman, who has dealt with life and death in The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. The Knight in the former constantly asks questions that are unanswered, while Eberhard Isak Borg, the professor in the latter, is afraid of dying, of ultimately drying up and facing a horrible fate.

Although Gerard in 8:17 P.M. Darling Street is wishing he did die, it is God who is not ready to take him yet. It is He who sees hope in this individual; Gerard, too, accepts what the 12 Steps to recovery has to say about a higher authority. By film's end, he has become a new man ready to live life to the fullest with Angela (Guylaine Tremblay), the woman who cares deeply for him.

Cinematographer Jean-Pierre St. Louis keeps the focus of the film's theme constant throughout by letting you experience Gerard's descent into loneliness and despair with the darkly lit streets and bars. Even his apartment has only one small light which makes it appear bigger than it actually is, to underscore the abyss from which he is trying to escape unwillingly.

The brightness of day at the beach that frames the beginning and end symbolizes his one last chance at redemption.

Augmented by Robert Marcel Lepage's music score, 8:17 P.M. Darling Street is as much absorbing as it is thought provoking. It is also one of the best films at this year's Kingston Canadian Film Festival.

February 7, 2004

Copyright 2004 Rick Jackson