Trois temps après la mort d'Anna (Mourning for Anna)

Presenting the harrowing struggles of a mother whose daughter is murdered in the prime of her youth, Catherine Martin's Trois temps après la mort d'Anna (Mourning for Anna) traumatically accentuates what it means to profoundly suffer. Stripping the narrative down to its bear essentials and rarely even moving the camera, Martin's portrait of Françoise's (Guylaine Tremblay) breakdown is desolate, poignant, and bleak. After her daughter's death, Françoise moves from Montréal to a remote family home in Kamouraska in order to confront her grief. Isolated, desperate, and alone, her mind begins to play tricks, and long lost family members suddenly appear. In a moment of despair, she collapses in a snowbank only to be rescued by a local painter (François Papineau as Edouard). As the film continues, Françoise subtly convalesces thanks to Edouard's patient kindness. Trois temps après la mort d'Anna substitutes landscapes and imagery for dialogue and action, illuminating a barren portrait of a mother's battle with spiritual destitution. Stark and lean yet vivacious and colourful, it directly submits a uniform thesis, leaving us free to respond with intuitive perceptions.