EARLY WINTER - PREMIÈRES NEIGES

DIRECTED BY MICHAEL ROWE

2015 / AUSTRALIA, QUÉBEC/CANADA | 96 minutes

Original version in English, Subtitled in French

DIRECTOR: Michael Rowe

SCREENPLAY: Michael Rowe

CAST: Suzanne  Clément, Paul Doucet, Micheline Lanctôt, Lise Martin

                

This film was the winner of the Jury Prize Venice Days (Giornate degli Autori), following its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September 2015. The film was also screened in North American premiere at the 44th Festival of New Cinema in Montreal in October 2015 as well as at the festivals of Rouyn-Noranda, Melbourne, Brisbane, Halifax and Kerala. The film was released in France on January 6 and it will screen in Australia in March. It will be screened in Montreal starting January 29, 2015.

David, in his fourties, is leading a routine life with his wife Maya and their two children. To fill his wife of the latest gadgets, he works alone day and night as a janitor in a nursing home. But then he begins to suspect that Maya  is unfaithful, his whole life that is put to test, the past threatens to overtake the present.

Film's Official Synopsis

"David, 45, lives in Montreal with his wife, Maya, a housewife of Russian extraction who only speaks English, and their two young sons. Working the night shift in a nursing home, David copes as best he can with his miserable life by scouring thrift shops in search of things to repair, and by taking antidepressants. His past haunts him, and invades the present brutally when he learns that Maya is planning to attend a design fair where she will surely see Alexander, her lover from six years ago. With this final instalment in his painful trilogy about solitude, preceded by Leap Year (Camera d’or and Louve d’or, 2010) and The Well, Mexican filmmaker Michael Rowe has made a family drama (co-produced in Canada) of impressive rigour, using minimalist, patient and empathetic sequence shots to observe the slow disintegration of a couple folded in on itself, under bright yet gloomy and often stifling lighting designed by Nicolas Canniccioni. Suzanne Clément plays Maya with strikingly icy charisma, while Paul Doucet impresses with his portrayal of a once rock-solid man cracking up before our eyes."

 Film Trailer