Fantastic Fest 09: TRUFFE Review

Todd Brown, Founder and Editor; Toronto, Canada (@AnarchistTodd)

September 27 2009, 11:17 AM

Ah, global warming, you devious bastard. Rising temperatures have had unexpected consequences in Kim Nguyen's Truffe - prime among them the sudden emergence of Montreal as the Black Truffle capital of the world, the tasty little morsels sprouting by the thousands deep below the surface. All that needs to be done is to go and get them. It's instant wealth for all, particularly for Charles - played by Roy Dupuis - the greatest truffle hunter of them all, a man blessed with such a sensitive nose that he pulls up truffles by the bagload from the small truffle mine beneath his apartment. But what with the laws of supply and demand the wealth is only short lived, the sudden flood of truffles causing the bottom to drop out of prices and leaving the miners to scramble for their supper. The miner's life is a hard one, even when their quarry is soft.

And life gets harder for the little guy, for the noble independent miner, with the arrival of a strange local fur shop intent on buying up the truffle mines; with big plans for globalization and mass canning. The furriers send out sinister, fuzzy, remote controlled little creations to control the minds and souls of Montreal's hard working men. Surely there is more here than meets the eye ...

A hidden gem from our Canadian back yard - the film had its world premiere at Montreal's Fantasia Festival before heading south of the border for a US bow at Fantastic Fest - Nguyen's Truffe calls to mind the Delicatessen era of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, creating a deliriously off-kilter world for his cast of characters to play in. Nguyen butts images of the deeply absurd up against the immediately familiar to create a totally unique experience, a world anchored by the quietly grounded performances of Roy Dupuis and Celine Bonnier -- also a couple in real life -- as their surroundings spin increasingly out of control. From backyard mushroom mines to the brilliantly lo-fi mind-control fur creatures to gangs of brainwashed door to door salesmen spreading through the neighborhood with full sized, vintage refrigerators strapped to their backs, Truffe is a true visual delight - a film that delights the eye just as its subject delights the tongue.

Roy Dupuis anchors the film with the sort of quiet charisma that has marked his entire career, a presence that makes the entire project feel surprisingly grounded and real - even as it spins farther and farther into bizarre science fiction territory. With his sly sense of humor and striking visual style director Nguyen is surely one of the great undiscovered talents working in North America today, a man blessed with the ability to spin completely convincing alternate worlds out of next to nothing. Thanks to a series of business collapses and buyouts along the production and distribution chain - economic troubles that had nothing at all to do with this particular film,, but which it very much became a victim of - Truffe is very much in danger of become a lost film in its native Canada. Thank god for events like this which allow it to be discovered.