West of Pluto
A l'ouest de Pluto

Canada, 2008, 95 Minute Running Time
Genre/Subjects: Coming of Age, Drama, Family Issues, Foreign, Romance, Social Issues, Teen Flick
Language: French English Sub-Titles

MUST END April 8
Digital presentation - Teenage angst is the same the world around, at least as evidenced by the way French-Canadian codirectors Myriam Verreault and Henry Bernadet get inside the troubled heads of ten adolescents in a suburban Quebec high school. Employing a mock-documentary style, the filmmakers give free rein to the teenagers’ secret crushes, garage-band obsessions, and taste for drug-fueled party chaos – without giving short shrift to their awareness of the world around them, be it a cheerleader’s view on Quebeçois secession or, as the title implies, a debate about the demotion of Pluto from planethood.
If Gus Van Sant had gone to Canada to make Elephant, or Larry Clark had drifted northward filming Kids, the result might have been something like this: the teenagers here are every bit as awkward and endearing, cruel and vulnerable, as their counterparts on US indie movie screens. Although West of Pluto was largely scripted, its plot is loose, and enough of the dialogue was improvised to give it a genuinely uncensored tone. Wisely, the first-time directors worked with their 15- and 16-year-old nonprofessional actors for six months before the first frame was ever shot, and the result is a completely believable and engaging glimpse into the coming-of-age phase.

DIRECTOR: Henry Bernadet, Myriam Verreault
Producer: Henry Bernadet, Myriam Verreault, Virginie Barret
Editor: Myriam Verreault
Screenwriter: Henry Bernadet, Myriam Verreault
Cinematographer: Patrick Faucher
Principal Cast: David Bouchard, Anne-Sophie Tremblay-Lamontagne, Alexis Drolet, Yoann Linteau
US Distributor: GKids

Official Film Website

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