Starring: Thomas Gibson, Ruth Marshall
Rating: ***
DIRECTOR DENYS ARCAND leaves virtually no stone unturned in this exploration of all that is wrong with today's twentysomething generation. Friendship, Aids, sexuality, perversion and violence are all given equal time and are depicted with the darkly textured humour that flavoured Arcand's best-known film, Jesus of Montreal.
Featuring a cast of virtually unknown actors, Love and Human Remains pulls the viewer into a world that embodies the alienated lifestyles of a generation left in limbo by a harsh and fast-changing world. Though the film focuses mainly on the lives of David (Thomas Gibson), a wryly embittered homosexual actor-turned-waiter and his former girlfriend Candy (Ruth Marshall), Love and Human Remains also manages to address the circumstances that have created their emotionally debilitated worlds. By introducing and developing a strange assembly of supporting characters, the film paints a sad portrait of modern life that may stretch the imagination a touch but nonetheless oozes truth and pathos, provoking sympathy and revulsion in turn as so often is the case in real life.
The film spans the spectrum of damage that can be inflicted - both on the self and upon others - when denial and alienation take hold of the emotions.
Interestingly enough, the character who at first seems to be the most perverse actually represents the morality that eludes the rest for much of the film. Benita (Mia Kirshner), David's friend and bondage queen/psychic, gives the film an eerily tender but slightly seedy feel, reflecting the subconscious forces that motivate much of society's tendencies for self-destruction. Oddly enough, she also is an innocent of sorts, providing the tangible difference between good and evil on which much of the film balances.
In Benita's eyes it is not the urges that make a person good or bad, it is how these feelings are acted out. Her world, though infused with the perverse, is utterly safe, as it is all performed under controlled circumstances between consenting adults. It is David who is the perhaps the most pitiable character - for all his humour and his wide circle of friends, he is incapable of love and has no qualms about saying so. Candy is a bit more optimistic about human nature - David's included - but his rebuffs push her further and further into a desperate search for relationships that lead her into simultaneous affairs with a married man and a love-struck lesbian.
Lurking in the shadowy emotional tangle of friendships is Bernie, formerly David's best friend. Weakened by the hopelessness of his civil service job, his eroding friendships and his hatred of women, Bernie becomes a true monster and the darkness and tension of the plot takes a horribly gruesome tone, catapulting the characters into a series of encounters that force them all to tear away their lesser fears and confront the truths they have been hiding from all the while.
Although Love and Human Remains has a condensed feel to it and the events can link up too quickly (the ending in particular seems sudden and stilted), the depth and texture of the themes make it unusual and interesting viewing.