Polytechnique

A tense early Denis Villenueve film based on a mass shooting at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique in 1989. Villenueve's fictionalized account follows the killer (never named; played by actor Maxim Gaudette) and three students on the day of the massacre. The shooter was an incel-like anti-feminist who specifically targeted the female students.

POLYTECHNIQUE isn't a by the numbers school shooting account. It flits from the day of the shooting to flashbacks and even a flash-forward. It's a highly stylized, almost impressionistic presentation. The three principal students are two female roommates, Valerie (Karine Vanasee; very good) and Stephanie (Evelyne Brochu), and Valerie's male friend Jean-Francois (Sébastien Huberdea). They are fairly quickly introduced and sketched out before the main events play out.

Shooting on Black & White film gives it a stark look, but Pierre Gill's camera glides and slides along gracefully. It's composed in the very widescreen aspect ratio of 2:35 (as opposed to the standard 1:85). The combination of the movements and the elongated monochrome frame gives the whole film the added haunting dimension. The music (Benoît Charest) is similarly against type for a crime picture. Simple and plaintive.

Villenueve's treatment (he collaborated with two others on the script) isn't exploitative, but, it's still very difficult to watch at times. His almost matter of fact direction of the central sequence is shocking without showy montage. The most chilling shot is of the killer calmly reloading as his victims lie dead or dying.

It's a relief in a way that the film is only 77 minutes long, but, it also adds to the general intensity. Villenueve's next film, the brilliant Oscar Nominated INCENDIES, really put him on the map (leading to his Hollywood career (SICARIO, PRISONERS, BLADE RUNNER 2049), but POLYTECHNIQE is, in its own compressed way, a significant achievement of its own.

P.S. The French-Canadian production shot simultaneously in French and in English. I saw the English language version, but the dialogue is so relatively sparse, it doesn't appear as if seeing the Quebecois version would be much different.