The Carriers are Waiting

Les Convoyeurs attendent

by D. K. Holm
www.cinemonkey.com

es Convoyeurs attendent (The Carriers are Waiting), one of the opening day films of of the 23rd Portland [Oregon] International Film Festival—that annual armada of movies sponsored by the Portland Art Museum's Northwest Film Center to destroy all critics—proves at first to be the perfect "festival" movie.

Belgian director and credited co-scripter Benoit Mariage tells what first appears to be a gentle coming-of-age story concerning Luise (the blond, Brigitte Fossey-lookalike Morgane Simon), in a grimy, dour industrial town, where she is the youngest daughter in a family whose head, Roger Closset (the rodential Benoit Poelvoorde of Man Bites Dog ), is a tyrannical father who struggles along as a photojournalist. The audience laughs gently at the humanistic snapshots of Luise's coming of age, her befriending of Felix (Philippe Grand'Henry), the pigeon champion next door, and when she goes along, helmeted, with her dad when the police scanner alerts him to a local disaster (where he is likely to order her to steal bread from the back of a crashed truck). Like My Life as a Dog and countless other surefire, popular films that view the world through the developing and humbled consciousness of a kid, Carriers presents Luise with a series of "revelations" about the way adulthood really works. In this regard, the film at first seems the perfect festival opener, with just enough "foreigness" to seem alien while not straying too far from a conventional narrative of a Hollywood brand, embracing an existential humanism that should be cozily familiar and evoke gentle, humanistic laughter.

But things turn dark. The laughter is stifled at the top of the lungs. It turns out that Luise is not necessarily the center of the film. Thus, quickly we lose that consistent guiding thread through the terror and mysteries of youth. Instead, Mariage and credited co-scripter Emmanuelle Bada is interested in profiling a whole family, and he turns to the son and father (though curiously not mother) to further explore family tensions. And Poelvoorde's Roger is, like many a father, something of a shit. Greedy, selfish, reckless, cheating, he berates his wife, comes on to another woman in front of Louise, and drives his son (Jean-Francois Devigne) to an act of self-destruction that almost costs the son his life.

It's this sudden, then gathering, darkness that sets Carriers apart from other Gallic celebrations of youthful purity and beauty. Mariage is brave enough to unfurl his family slowly, coldly, yet all embracing acceptance of their variety. It is the perfect marriage of conventional humanism and unpredictable surrealism.

For more information concerning the festival contact the Film Center's website.

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