For obvious reasons, I’ve always associated French-language films with France, the birthplace of many a fine movie.  However, three French-language films that are screening at SIFF this coming weekend are from much closer to home–Quebec–and offer up ample evidence that French Canadians are every bit as qualified to create meaningful movie experiences as their European counterparts.  All three films–Continental: A Film Without Guns,  Everything Is Fine, and The 3 Little Pigs–present nuanced looks at the complicated lives of people struggling with serious real-world issues including loneliness, suicide, and infidelity, with tones ranging from sardonic to serious.

While all the movies have some humor woven in, The 3 Little Pigs is the only one of the three that can be fairly described as a comedy.  The titular “pigs” are three brothers who come together in the hospital to sit watch over their comatose mother while they discuss the pros and cons of adultery.  Middle brother Mathieu loves his wife and young daughters, but he is tempted by an attractive young co-worker with whom he’s developed an ongoing flirtation.  Awkward, sex-obsessed youngest brother Christian encourages his contemplation of an affair while staid old brother Remi counsels against it, warning of the potential for disaster while smugly proclaiming that a respected businessman like himself would never even consider such a thing.  Back at home, Mathieu is a doting father but although his affection for his wife is obvious, so is his frustration with their lack of money and time for each other.  The object of his admiration is a charming young woman who offers him a fantasy of uncomplicated amusement.  The reality, of course, is not quite what he imagined, but he’s not alone when it comes to marital difficulties.  Christian deals with his unhappy marriage to a hard-edged cop by turning to porn, cybersex and longing looks at one of his young karate students.  Despite his financial success, he lives in a large house with a wife and daughter who are mostly cool to him and high daughter’s ill-kempt slacker boyfriend who won’t even speak to him.  Even as they argue about Mathieu’s sex life, the other brothers face temptations of their own; eventually they have to face the music, to touching, funny and surprising results.  The character are likable despite their flaws and misbehaviors and the film’s quick pace makes the sometimes complicated plot move in a light, lively way.

Everything Is Fine takes a much more serious look as its topic; appropriate, since this movie tells a story of the effects of the loved ones left behind by suicide.  Four members of a tight-knit group of five teenaged boys take their lives simultaneously one day affecting everyone who knew them, particularly 16 year old Josh, the fifth member of the group who insists to all who asks that he knew nothing of their plans.  Josh keeps his feelings close to his chest, revealing little to his worried parents and nothing at all in his hostile interactions with the psychologist they force him to see.  Because of his reticence to reveal much, Josh is a difficult character to like at first and the beginning part of the slow-paced film moves almost glacially.  The story becomes most engaging when Josh makes attempts to reach out to others affected by the boys’ suicide, awkwardly attempting a friendship with the father of one of the boys and fumbling through a budding romance with the ex-girlfriend of another.  The love interest, Mia, is perhaps the most engaging of the characters in the film; struggling to balance her own feelings of pain and helplessness with her growing affection for Josh.  Josh seems to care for her as well, but has his despair built walls too high for anyone to climb over?  Left to his own devices, Josh wanders the town, seeing reminders of his lost friends that send him into reveries of memory.  Though not a mystery in the usual sense of the term, there is a strong element of suspense throughout Everything Is Fine.  Flashbacks reveal hints of his friends’ personalities, but offer no clues why they chose suicide or why Josh was left out of their decision–or do they?  Perhaps the strongest character in the film, it is Mia who first realizes that Josh may know more about what happened to his friends than he is letting on and when Josh takes surprising action to deal with his feelings, she is the one who offers him the chance at hope and happiness.  Although the film suffers a bit from some awkward editing, particularly in the transitions in and out of the flashback scenes, it is provocative and rewarding and presents one of the most realistic depictions of what it’s really like to be a teenager I’ve seen in film.

The third film, Continental: A Film Without Guns has moments of black humor, but is the most bleak of them, telling the stories of four people whose lives of loneliness and alienation interact to varying degrees.  The wife of a man who has disappeared after taking a bus to nowhere struggles to fill her empty days in an indifferent world; the only person to take note of her is the cynical police officer who tells her to stop calling since there’s “no point” in looking for her husband.  A man takes a job for which he’s not quite suited as a life insurance agent, far from his wife and child in a city where the only person he “knows” is the night front desk clerk at his cookie cutter hotel.  The desk clerk is so hungry for human contact that she leaves herself messages on her own answering machine just to hear a voice in her empty apartment.  An older man who owns a junk/repair shop with no customers is forced to beg his estranged wife for money to pay for the dental operation he needs but cannot afford.  Their lives touch at small points but each of the characters is so trapped in his or her misery that it seems hopeless to believe they’ll be able to change their lot, and, yet they manage to carry on; if they can’t quite make it out of the tunnel, perhaps they can make it to the point where they’ll see the light at its end.

The 3 Little Pigs screens Saturday, May 24 at 1:30 and Sunday, May 25 at 9:45 pm; Everything Is Fine screens Saturday, May 24 at 7:00 pm and Sunday, May 25 at 4:15; Continental: A Film Without Guns screens Friday, May 23 at 9:30 pm and Saturday, May 24 at 11:00 am.  All three films are being shown at Pacific Place.