A Wind From Wyoming

Starring:FranÃ§ois Cluzet, Sarah-Jeanne Salvy, France Castel, Michel CÃ´tÃ©, Marc Messier, CÃ©line Bonnier, LÃ©o Munger, Donald Pilon, Marcel Sabourin, Martin Randez, Jean-Marie Lapointe, Marc GÃ©linas, Patrice Arbour, Elise Varo, FranÃ§oise Berd, Marcel Fournier, Real Bouvier, Reggie Chartrand, Yvan Ducharme, Charles Fournier
Director: AndrÃ© Forcier
Studio: Facets
Product Type: DVD

Description

On the eve of her 18th birthday, Lea is dumped by her boxer boyfriend Reo. She turns to her mother, Lizette (France Castel), for comfort, only to discover that mom has run off with her sweetheart. Untouched by the family scandal, at least at first, is Lea's vastly overweight sister, Manon, who sublimates her obsessive love for celebrated author Chester Celine by stuffing herself with candy. Albert the Great, a hack hypnotist who works the cabaret at the seedy Oscar Motel, is drawn into the drama by Lea and her father, who believes he can win back his wife. The arrival of Chester Celine creates more emotional chaos when he runs into the arms of Lea in order to escape the clutches of Manon. A top-notch cast headlines director Andr Forcier's smart, surreal, and very funny look at dysfunctional families, relationships, and the mysteries of love.

Customer Reviews:

Surrealistic take on love... Not for mainstream audiences.......2005-06-14

This French Canadian production directed by André Forcier is a surrealistic satire exploring the nature of romantic love and dysfunctional family relationships. Lea (Sarah-Jeanne Salvy) is distraught when her boyfriend breaks off their relationship. However when she turns to her mother for solace she finds that her boyfriend has in fact dumped her for her mother. Her father tries to win back his wife with the aid of a hypnotist. Meanwhile, her chubby younger sister has a crush on a celebrated author and throws herself at him only to find him winding up in Lea's arms. When Lea falls for the author, the jealous hypnotist who wants Lea for himself, turns the author into a woman hater. The convoluted plot and bizarre situations could easily descend into a third rate farce but for the steady hand of Forcier and the very good all round cast. The dialogue in a French Canadian patois known as Joual sounds rather peculiar, French with lots of English words thrown in and spoken with something akin to a Texan drawl. With levitating nuns, boxers waltzing in pairs, old men dressed in WWI army uniforms digging graves, bar rooms filled with plastic mannequins, this has been compared with the surrealistic/absurdist works of Luis Bunuel. It has a rather sad, bittersweet ending with Lea finally accepting love for what it is, warts and all. I found it rather too bleak for my taste but it was nonetheless quite involving. Unfortunately, it will probably not appeal to most American audiences.

This DVD from Facets Video presents a modified fullscreen version of the movie. It appears to be an Open-Matte version where the mattes across the top and bottom of the film frame, used to produce the widescreen theatrical version, have been removed to give us the full film frame. The result is we get to see more of the picture, including things we were never meant to see, like microphone booms dipping down from the top edge of the frame and the fact that the actors are actually wearing underwear during love scenes when they are supposed to be naked. The picture quality is generally fair. The image tends to be on the soft side but colors are accurate. The original French soundtrack is in 2.0 mono. Unfortunately English subtitles are permanently burned onto the film in large white type and cannot be removed.

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