Behind Me
**½/****
starring Carina Caputo, Charlotte Legault, Patrice Dubois
written and directed by Rafaël Ouellet
by Bill Chambers The title translates as Behind Me, which is sort of where I want to put this Lukas Moodysson-esque downer. I hasten to add, though, that this is a work of fierce emotional intelligence, and I honestly can't decide whether its profoundly upsetting closing minutes (however bullshit they might be) are an example of the characters letting us down or the filmmakers letting the characters down, cynically betraying them and the scenario for shock value. What's interesting is that the logline sent out to the press for Derrière moi obliquely gives away the ending whilst framing the entire film in the context of it–but I hadn't read this synopsis beforehand and do wonder whether being more aware of the contours of a plot would've made the coda more palatable or simply killed my patience for the movie's slow burn. In Derrière moi, Léa (Charlotte Legault), a comely 14-year-old girl staying with her grandmother in some French-Canadian backwater, catches the predatory eye of Betty (Carina Caputo), a twentysomething drifter too exotic, worldly, and dominant a personality for sheltered only-child Léa to resist. The set-up is nothing if not psychologically acute, and the constant undercurrent of remorse in Legault's performance rings truer than, say, Evan Rachel Wood's total and instantaneous divorce from her conscience in Thirteen. And it's unfortunate that Betty's hidden agenda subverts Caputo's rich characterization of a woman whose sophistication act is so pathetic that it takes someone much younger not to see through it; Betty's desperation is rendered all too circumstantial by that final turn of the screw. PROGRAMME: Vanguard
