17/05 - CANNES DAILY ON POLYTECHNIQUE

ENTERTAINMENT / CANNES FILM FESTIVAL / CANNES DAILY / 17/05 - CANNES DAILY ON POLYTECHNIQUE

17 May 2009 — Denis Villeneuve's startling Polytechnique leaves out some of the details surrounding the actual massacre that occurred on December 6, 1989 in Montreal's Polytechnique School. This Canadian film, which premiered tonight in the Directors' Fortnight program in Cannes, doesn't say much about the killer. We don't even learn his name, which is for the best (enough has been said about him already). What Polytechnique does give us, in chilling black-and-white, is a harrowing depiction of what it meant to be in that school, hiding under those desks, fleeing through the halls, on that day when 14 women lost their lives and dozens more were wounded. And what the film does to absolute perfection is examine what it means to be a survivor of such atrocity, to narrowly and inexplicably elude death. How to continue living with the terrible knowledge that others weren't so lucky?One thing we do find out about the killer is that he wants to kill women. That detail is too important to ignore. The real-life murderer in this story wanted to kill all women, women he blamed for being "feminists" and for causing him to be unhappy (at least that's what was implied in his suicide note). When he confronts a group of women in a classroom (in the film as in the real event), one woman tries to explain that she isn't a feminist. She is shot anyway. That woman was Nathalie Provost, and she survived.The truly heartbreaking scenes in Polytechnique imply that the victims of the massacre may not have been feminists but they were certainly victims of sexist stereotypes that made it unlikely for women to study engineering in 1989. Twelve of the 14 women killed were engineering students. The film shows one of them preparing for a job internship in an aeronautics firm, putting on her best stockings and heels. The interviewer asks, pointedly, if she plans on having children, and suggests she might be happier elsewhere, doing something "easier."When the massacre is over (the real killing spree lasted only 20 minutes, and ended with the killer putting a bullet in his brain), the business of surviving begins. What happens to the students who lived? They listen to their mothers tell them, "I'm here if you need me." They are jolted awake by their nightmares. They cry alone in the dark. They think of ending their life because they can't think how to begin living. They accept love. They go on to become aeronautics engineers. They think constantly of their friends who died and their friends who were wounded. And they tell themselves, "I have to learn to stand up. If I have a son, I will teach him to love. And if I have a daughter, I will teach her the world will be hers." — Randall KoralThis year NESPRESSO has Cannes covered, inside and out. Vincent Maraval gives us his take on the films his company, Wild Bunch, is screening during the festival ("Un Autre Regard," exclusively on NESPRESSO's website, daily at 6 p.m.). And Randall Koral, NESPRESSO's Cannes correspondent, serves up his impressions of the films and festivities as they happen ("Cannes Daily", 11 a.m. CET).