The liquid passion of Manon Briand's Chaos and Desire

TAKE ONE, Dec, 2002 by Isa Tousignant

Life is overwhelming in its mutability sometimes. Forget sometimes: always. We are constantly, daily, at every moment of our waking life adapting to things unknown, new and unexpected.

Of course, some situations in life are more predictable and familiar than others, like, say, walking down a street you know well, or doing a job you've done so many times before it has become second nature. But even then, something as simple as a change in the weather could revolutionize your experience: a sunny spring day will caress you softly with its warm wind as you stroll, and perhaps provide you with an extra reason to smile; while a rainy mid-October afternoon, when you haven't yet psychologically caught up to the change in seasons so you've worn the wrong kind of coat (again) and forgotten your umbrella, letting the drizzle trickle unpleasantly down the back of your neck--well, that might affect you differently. Some things are harder to adapt to.

That fact became tragically obvious to me after my interview with Quebec filmmaker Manon Briand about her latest film La Turbulence des fluides, released in English as Chaos and Desire. The film is a metaphysical love story, basically, but it's couched in a highfalutin' exploration of the psychological changes humans experience as we try to adapt to incomprehensible meteorological phenomena. The phenomenon that changed my life that day was of a very physical order. But more on that later.

Starring Quebec sweetheart Pascale Bussieres as Alice Bradley, an emotionally repressed seismologist, Chaos and Desire is a thematically ambitious, psychologically multifarious film. Briand is known--mainly thanks to her acclaimed debut short, Picoti Picota (1995), her contribution to the collaborative work Cosmos (1996) and her prize-winning first feature, 2 secondes (1998)--for her sensitivity, and the detailed attention with which she investigates her themes. More than simple storytelling, her films aim at explaining the world, their narrative thrust serving practically as accessory, as a means toward philosophizing. This film exemplifies this idea. The filmmaker delves deep into natural phenomena and their associated fields of study--ranging from earthquakes to forest fires to tidal fluctuations and the scientific tools used to study them--and then uses this as backdrop for the building of a relationship between the two central characters and the psychological development of the myriad, intimately explore d, secondary characters. The earthly manifestations are the narrative's active agents; humanity follows in their wake.

Born in Baie-Comeau--like Briand herself--but abandoned at birth, Alice Bradley has not returned to her native land since her childhood. Her adult life has been spent in Japan, as far away from her roots as possible, where she lives the clinical, high-paced, high-tech life of the workaholic scientist, allergic to all affective ties. Still licking her wounds from a long-gone but life-changing heartbreak, she has closed herself off from others, but it's a lifestyle that suits her well. She resents the disruption, then, when it comes one day in the form of an inexplicable phenomenon occurring on the other side of the planet-her birthplace. It seems the tide has stopped. There have been weeks of low tide, in the exact bay where she came to life. The personal encroaches on the professional when her superiors send her to the site where she is to study the matter and report on its possible relation to an expected earthquake of dangerous proportions. Off to Quebec she goes.

Her plans to come, see and conquer as rapidly as possible are sabotaged as soon as she arrives, as such plans are wont to be. Her carefully protected front of social dissociation receives its first blow from Catherine Rolland (Julie Gayet), a friend from childhood turned ecological journalist who just happens to be covering the story, with whom she renews ties. Suddenly Alice is faced with an ability to feel again, which makes her incapable of remaining unaffected by the electric energy of Marc Vandal (Jean-Nicholas Verrault), an inscrutable supply-plane pilot who seems to mirror hei interest. And then the odd behaviour of the village's inhabitants, scientifically unexplainable but impossible to ignore, pierces her indifference as well. Things are coincidentally curious since the water stopped moving. An aura of want hangs over the area, coupled with a suffocating, humid heat and an unidentifiable briny, animalistic smell. Could it be...the smell of sex?

The day of my interview with Briand, it was raining, but I'd worn the right coat and brought an umbrella, so all was good. It wasn't too cold, just a little coot and the hazy greyness gave the streets a calm, reflective feel that wasn't unwelcome, knowing I'd be interviewing Briand in a noisy cafe. (If you interview any filmmaker in Montreal and let them choose the venue you can bet your bottom dollar they'll suggest this one techno snack bar on the Plateau-it's like a public exhibition for the hip and intellectual, "Look! I'm getting interviewed! By media!") I invested in a snazzy pin-on mic to counter the ambient sound of chattering and clinking china. I was very proud of the gadget as I pinned it on her scarf--it was the subject of a few minutes of conversation. We did a sound check, it worked perfectly, and so we proceeded with the interview.