EARLY WINTER

David, 45, lives in Montreal with his wife, Maya, a housewife of Russian extraction who only speaks English, and their two young sons. Working the night shift in a nursing home, David copes as best he can with his miserable life by scouring thrift shops in search of things to repair, and by taking antidepressants. His past haunts him, and invades the present brutally when he learns that Maya is planning to attend a design fair where she will surely see Alexander, her lover from six years ago. With this final instalment in his painful trilogy about solitude, preceded by Leap Year (Camera d’or and Louve d’or, 2010) and The Well, Mexican filmmaker Michael Rowe has made a family drama (co-produced in Canada) of impressive rigour, using minimalist, patient and empathetic sequence shots to observe the slow disintegration of a couple folded in on itself, under bright yet gloomy and often stifling lighting designed by Nicolas Canniccioni. Suzanne Clément plays Maya with strikingly icy charisma, while Paul Doucet impresses with his portrayal of a once rock-solid man cracking up before our eyes.