Friday One Sheet: UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

Brutalism is back, baby!  Behold the mighty Winnipeg mortar arches, and thin veneer of snow that together form one of many visual motifs in Matthew Rankin's superbly dry dramedy Universal Language. A large part of the film's delights come from the precise, witty framing of objects and people. I expect no less from the key art, and here it delivers. 

Even the Easter-pastel colour scheme of the credits gives off a cool charm. The design here tucks the above the title credits in once corner, and the credit block and festival laurels in the other. It gives lots of credit, in a lot of text, but it is tiny among the  negative space. Like the design of the poster, several disparate images and ideas come together and meet in the cold, barren, city of Winnipeg in the middle of winter.

Universal Language is one of the true gems of warmth (and absurdity) to tour the festival circuit in 2024. You owe yourself a favour to catch it in a cinema, not a streaming service, if you get the opportunity in 2025. One can only hope that this discomfortingly obtuse key art graces film lobbies around Canada and the world.

Like Guy Maddin before him, Matthew Rankin is a national treasure.