Bows and Flows of Angel Hair
WOMAN IN CAR (Femme. Voiture.) – a film by Vanya Rose – SPOILERS
Safiye (Liane Balaban)
Vanya Rose takes the characters from Edith Wharton’s THE REEF and inserts them into an alternate universe where their primary motivations remain the same, but causality is warped. Set in Montreal instead of Paris, it is (fundamentally) a three character story. Anne (Hélène Joy) is Anna from the novel. Safiye (Lianne Balaban) corresponds to Sophy the Governess, and Anne’s sister-in-law Charlotte (Gabrielle Lazure) can be regarded as an alt-universe version of the Dowager Marquise de Chantelle. Or, alternatively, the three might be Artemis (Goddess of the Hunt), Athena (Goddess of Handicrafts), and Hera (sister and wife of Zeus). However one interprets them, everything each of them says must be attended closely. Beware of plot twists that appear just at the edge of perception, then promptly disappear.
Anne (Hélène Joy) takes aim at what she hopes will be dinner.
Joy told Peter Ramoliotis of Popternative: “[The film] actually requires the audience to do a lot in order to connect with what’s going on, but it also allows people to connect in completely different ways. It touches upon issues of class, of gender, of power, and a woman’s place in the world — what we give up within ourselves in order to feel safe.”
Anne is an archer who almost made it to the Sydney Olympics in 2000, and is scheduled to marry David (Anthony Lemke), someone her late husband Fraser (who was killed years ago in a hit-run accident) had known since childhood. Her stepson Owen (Aidan Ritchie) brings his girlfriend Safiye to visit Anne and her ten-year-old (?) daughter Emma (Harriette Legault, just prior to Anne’s scheduled wedding.
It is possibly significant that Safiye goes alone to the cinema to see Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film À bout de souffle (Breathless).
Anne (coincidentally?) encounters Albert (Frank Schorpion) and Jeanne (Raïssa Beaudoin), two old friends of her late husband, when she follows Safiye to the theatre
At the film’s outset we are presented with a Wharton quote from A BACKWARD GLANCE, not about THE REEF, but instead about how she created the heroine of an earlier novel, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH: “A frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys.” (The continuation of that quote is: “Its tragic implication lies in its power of debasing people and ideals.”) Rose’s use of that quote gives enhanced importance to the following bit of dialogue:
CHARLOTTE: “Do you think my mother was not left alone with me and Fraser?”
ANNE: “That was 60 years ago. Things have changed.”
CHARLOTTE: “Nothing has changed. Anyone who tries to convince you that things have changed is either a fool or a nobody.”
Hélène Joy’s character on MURDOCH MYSTERIES, Dr. Julia Ogden, also displayed archery skills in “Murdoch in Ladies Wear” (Episode 6.8)
In an interview with Justine Smith of Cult MTL, Rose hinted at how the film’s title came about, saying that after she moved to the Montreal borough of Outremont: “I started taking my kids to school around here, and I’d just roll up dressed like whatever, but these other women were perfect. I’d walk down Laurier, and there would be these perfect women in cars, waiting. Is this their only time alone? Are they waiting for their kids? Waiting for someone else?”
Original music for the film comes from Swedish-Canadian indie rock band THUS OWLS (Erika and Simon Angell). “Lovers Are Falling“, the song heard over the closing credits and the short scene that follows them, was nominated for Best Original Song at the 2022 Canadian Screen Awards.