Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y.) returns to Canada's Top Ten with the elegant and heart wrenching Café de flore, a decades-spanning, often mystical rumination on love and destiny that tells two seemingly unrelated stories set in 1960s Paris and present-day Montreal. Exquisitely directed by one of our most assured filmmakers, it's a troubling exploration of forces we seldom acknowledge and even more rarely understand.
Notes
Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y.) returns to Canada's Top Ten with the elegant and heart-wrenching Café de flore, a decades-spanning, often mystical rumination on love and destiny.
Café de flore tells two seemingly unrelated stories: in the first one, set in present-day Montreal, successful DJ Antoine (Kevin Parent) balances the demands of his career with his responsibilities towards his new love, Rose (Evelyne Brochu), his daughters, and his ex, Carole (Helene Florent), who still harbours a secret belief that Antoine will return to her; in the second, in 1969 Paris, Jacqueline (Vanessa Paradis) is the fiercely devoted mother of Laurent, a young boy with Down syndrome. Defying the doctors, her husband, and their decidedly conventional wisdom, Jacqueline fights for her son until his interest in the outside world threatens their relationship.
Exquisitely directed by one of our most assured filmmakers, Café de flore is a troubling exploration of forces we seldom acknowledge and even more rarely understand.
- Agata Smoluch del Sorbo
Atlantic Film Festival; Toronto International Film Festival; Venice Film Festival.
Café de flore is a deeply emotional love story between two families, gently interweaving the past with the present like two films. The audience is left endlessly curious as to the relationship between both worlds. Jean-Marc Vallée has skillfully crafted a very subtle, yet extremely detailed film, beautifully shot from beginning to end. His unique story structure blurs the line between love and sadness, the challenges of accepting reality and the ability to let go.
- Brenda Lieberman
Anyone who has ever been brought to their knees by love may well find a cinematic soulmate in Jean-Marc Valleé's Cafe de Flore. It is as baffling and contradictory and sweetly insane as the human heart. Weaving elegantly between two seemingly unrelated stories, we watch the helpless, wrenching pain of lovers and families being ripped apart. Valleé's masterful, cinematic poetry is breathtaking, and, like love and its loss, bigger than any rationale could ever contain.
- Patricia Rozema