TIFF Review: 35 RHUMS

For some it is difficult to retire the past, for others impossible, and—in the case of a dead cat—for at least one fellow it’s comically effortless. Clair Denis’ 35 Rhums (variously translated as 35 Rums and 35 Shots, and best conflated as 35 Shots of Rum) is her melancholic ode to recompense and reconciliation in the face of irretrievable loss.

Lionel (in a charismatically understated performance by Alex Descas) has lost his wife; Josephine (Mati Diop) has lost her mother, and their shared grief is held in incestuous abeyance, both reluctant to let go of their family’s past shape to honor future incarnations. Lionel resists Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue) who aggressively dreams of stepping into the void left by his wife to become Josephine’s surrogate mother; Josephine resists Noe (Grégoire Colin), the hopeful young man upstairs who courts her attentions faithfully against memory’s odds. They all reside in the same apartment house where breaking Lionel and Josephine’s incestuous enthrallment is the film’s homage to Ozu.

With its nocturnal palette of “yellow and TV blue windows” and sinuous night trains curving the rails, Denis establishes a mise-en-scene of urban loneliness early on, emphasized by many a night ride home (either on motorbikes or taxis or rendered in one rapturous poetic image as father and daughter riding horseback on the tracks). Both darkness and loss are held at bay with lit interiors and in yet another lovely sequence children’s paper lanterns ward off the dusk. Love ultimately shines forth; a cause for celebration and a toast of 35 rums.

Cross-published on The Evening Class.