En terrains connus (2011) Familiar Ground
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 30m, rated 6.6 by 553 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy; drama.
DNA; Québécois.
Verdict: Odd.
Tagline: Another ‘film without a gun’ from Stéphane Lafleur.*
She is trapped in a loveless marriage while her brother cannot grow up. The inertia in their lives is manifested in a backhoe à vendre sitting on the snow-covered lawn. We never do learn how they came to possess this totem.
An accident at the paper factory where she works jars her from somnambulance, while her drifting brother is likewise disturbed by a brief conversation with a man who claims to come from the future. Both are freed, perhaps only briefly, from the inertia that has governed them. Together sister and brother embark on a road trip into the eternal north of Québec and change the future.
It is that man who claims to be from the future that triggers the label Sy Fy, and that claim is never developed, but it stimulates the brother to action. Though he might as well have had a premonition, and stirred himself to act on it.
All in all it is laconic in a genre of Québec films that focus on the working stiffs, usually absent from Hollywood, and combines that with a soupçon of wintry magic realism. The cinematography of winter tells a good part of the story of these hibernating people.
Oh, and no, I can’t explain the title. Let me know if you got it.
*You either get it or you don’t. There is no explanation here.