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Review: Miraculum
Non-linear narrative gets the strong ensemble cast it deserves
By BRENDAN KELLY, THE GAZETTE February 28, 2014
Louise Turcot and Julien Poulin play casino workers engaged in a torrid love affair in Miraculum.
Photograph by: Seville Pictures
Miraculum
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
Starring: Xavier Dolan, Marilyn Castonguay, Robin Aubert, Anne Dorval, Julien Poulin, Gabriel Sabourin, Louise Turcot, Jean-Nicolas Verreault
Directed by: Podz
Running time: 104 minutes
Parental guidance: dark themes, sex scenes
Opens Friday, Feb. 28 in French with English subtitles at: Cinéma du Parc; in French at: Angrignon, Beaubien, Boucherville, Brossard, Colossus, Dorion, Longueuil, Marché Central, Pont Viau, Quartier Latin, St. Bruno, St. Eustache, StarCité cinemas
There is much to like in Miraculum, the latest film from Podz, a.k.a. Daniel Grou.
It starts with a very strong screenplay from screenwriter and actor Gabriel Sabourin, a thought-provoking drama that swings back and forth in time. Then there’s the assured direction of Podz, who shows his usual visual finesse and ability to tell a story in non-traditional fashion.
But what I like most in this ensemble film is the ensemble. Podz has always been an actor’s director — think of Claude Legault in Les 7 jours du talion, young Robert Naylor in 10½ and Marc-André Grondin in L’Affaire Dumont. Podz seems to get the best out of his thespians, and that’s the case once again in Miraculum.
They’re all good, notably director/actor Xavier Dolan, who’s playing against type as a buttoned-down electrician and Jehovah’s Witness; Julien Poulin as a casino barman; Louise Turcot as the coat-check woman at the same casino; Robin Aubert as a high-powered man with gambling issues; Anne Dorval as his unhappy wife, who’s drowning her sorrows in alcohol; and Sabourin as a tortured guy who’s working as a drug mule, bringing dope back from Latin America.
But good as they are, the one you won’t forget any time soon is Marilyn Castonguay. This is a multi-story film where there isn’t one main star in terms of screen time, but her luminous presence is what holds it all together.
Castonguay rose to prominence with a standout performance as a determined single mother who comes to the defence of a man wrongly accused of rape in L’Affaire Dumont. Here she plays Julie, a nurse who’s also a Jehovah’s Witness. She’s engaged to Dolan’s Étienne and is freaking out because he’s dying of leukemia and refusing a blood transfusion, since it’s against his religious principles. At the same time, she has become obsessed with the lone survivor of a terrible plane crash and will have to make a major decision about blood transfusions herself.
Three other stories are told at the same time. There’s the sad-sack goings-on of the miserable couple played by Aubert and Dorval, the torrid romance between the barman and coat-check woman played by Poulin and Turcot, and Sabourin as Simon, who’s smuggling drugs and dealing with a brother (Jean-Nicolas Verreault) who doesn’t want to know about him.
It’s a mighty impressive feat of writing and filmmaking, with the drama effortlessly flashing back and forth, before and after the plane crash, and moving from character to character. But as is often the case in these sorts of films — the same thing happened in Babel, which had a similar structure — some of the stories and people are more interesting than others.
I was wrapped up in the moral dilemma of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and it’s impossible not to be swept away by the gritty love affair between the casino staffers. But I never really cared much about the bourgeois couple who are gambling and boozing, and oddly enough, given that he’s the author, Sabourin’s drug runner never really came to life for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd3lQ4ocB5M Trailer in French