When I was young I used to go to a local river every year and watch salmon spawn. It was very macabre as there were hundreds of people there at any given time watching these fish swim upstream, lay and fertilize a nest of eggs before dying and becoming food for the seagulls. At the same time it's amazing to think that the fish fertilized in those eggs will one day return to the same stream to repeat the cycle. A similar story is hinted at in Manon Briand's Canadian film Chaos and Desire, although it doesn't come close to the magic of real fish spawning.

Alice (Pascale Bussières) is a Canadian seismologist based in Japan. She is sent on assignment to her hometown of Baie-Comeau where she moved away from at such a young age she no longer has any memory of the place. The tide has stopped at the sleepy sea town. Alice is sent to investigate the possibility of an impending major earthquake. The homecoming is dotted with quirky and enigmatic characters whose importance to Alice are more symbolic than personal. All except the hunky and mysterious water bomber pilot, Marc Vandal (Jean-Nicolas Verreault). As Alice unravels the mystery of the disappearing tides, she also learns big answers to universal questions of love, friendship and a sense of home.

I had a hard time figuring out what to make of Chaos and Desire. The setup had it as a geological mystery, which I thought was interesting. But then there were several stylistic moments that had me thinking farce. For example, the romance angle between Alice and Marc was obvious when you first see him. When the two first meet and shake hands there's an electric shock. A spark if you will. The symbol is far too obvious to be taken seriously, yet it doesn't fit the tone of what I thought was the original intent.

I have a thing for films set in small towns. It's a personal thing. There's just something about the desolation of being in the middle of nowhere that forces characters to look at themselves. Distractions are limited and the opportunities to go out and do 'stuff' is limited. So whatever entertainment and leisure is left invariably turns inward. Alice does show signs of falling into this pattern although the reflection becomes fodder for quirky situations rather than personal reflection and, ultimately, growth. I may be shallow, but sleepwalking children, telephone books missing all the same pages and long, lost mysteries are on the surface more interesting than a girl finding her place in a hometown she doesn't know. The problem is, this stuff is fluff that's taking away from what I think was meant to be the real story. Writer/director Briand toned down Alice's journey for the legends of the town, which should have been limited to plot initiators and stayed in the background.

A good thing about remote locales is that they almost always present a refreshing change of scenery from the generic downtown hot spots and sprawling suburban cookie-cutter neighbourhoods. This is something Chaos and Desire does very well. Metal trailers set up on beaches are like rhinoceroses on a tennis court. Sweeping overhead shots brings the bay's unique terrain to life. Water bombers fly through smoldering forest fires and drop their cargo on the tress below. Briand succeeds in making the environment an important part of her story.

Sadly, little else does work. Once you get past the intrigue of Baie-Comeau's resident strange-nicks and into the story of Alice, you get little more than a fish-out-of-water tale told like my uncle's suspect raves of his annual fishing trip: colourful but not terribly enlightening.

©Movie Views; June 29, 2003