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Québec filmmaker and producer Jean-Marc Vallée told stories of human complexity

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Québec filmmaker and producer Jean-Marc Vallée told stories of human complexity


The death of director Jean-Marc Vallée at the age of 58, on Dec. 25, sent shock waves throughout Québec and the international film industry. His critically acclaimed work broke many taboos and, combined with his unique esthetic, made Vallée an important artist of our time.

As a doctoral student in literature and performing and screen arts, my research lies at the intersection of feminist, film and television studies. In this article, I focus on Vallée’s cinematic style, which is deeply rooted in empathy.

An esthetic of simplicity

Vallée became known to Québec filmgoers with the release of his feature film Liste Noire (1995), but it was C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005) that propelled him to international fame.

This family drama set in the ‘70s continues to move viewers with the heartbreaking father-son relationship it depicts. But the film is slightly different from Vallée’s subsequent work. By the director’s own admission, the film is loaded with visual effects and technical features that were meant to demonstrate his love of filmmaking.

Jean-Marc Vallée and Pierre Even celebrate C.R.A.Z.Y.‘s award for best film of the year in 2006 at the Jutras Awards in Montréal.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/David Boily

Vallée’s style evolved in his later films: the camera was routinely shoulder-mounted, even for static shots. In an interview, Vallée explained that he saw his job as a filmmaker as capturing actors’ performances. Vallée developed the basics for this process in Café de Flore (2011), shooting dialogues using the shot/countershot technique by moving the camera without cutting the recording. This technique, borrowed from direct cinema and documentary, creates a more natural mise en scène where beauty emerges from simplicity.

Dallas Buyers Club (2013), which was made on a very low budget, gave Vallée an opportunity to refine this technique. Scenes were shot with natural lighting, without spotlights or other equipment hidden behind the camera, which made it possible to film 360-degree shots. With a handheld camera and a very small film crew, the camera follows the course of the scene according to the movements of the actors, affording them more freedom.

The film ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ starring Matthew McConaughey, allowed Vallée to refine his filming techniques.

This method demonstrated that Vallée allocated as much time as possible on his sets not to technique, but first and foremost to allowing actors to play with the camera, to perform a peculiar dance that places the story at its heart. By accepting a certain level of risk with this approach, Vallée departed from the canons and rules of traditional filming to provide his films a more organic and unique esthetic.

Beauty in imperfection

There is a visual metaphor in Café de Flore that perfectly embodies Vallée’s thematic approach: on several occasions, the protagonist moves away from the camera without leaving the frame. The camera remains in place and the focus shifts to the extras, all of whom have Down syndrome. This is a stylistic device that prefigured Vallée’s approach of shifting the point of view to individuals who are generally relegated to the background of society.

‘Café de Flore’, starring Vanessa Paradis, created a space for people who are often in the background of society.

The album The Dark Side of the Moon by the band Pink Floyd is prominent in Vallée’s work and the symbolism is not trivial; Vallée’s work reveals the dark side of human complexity. His films are like a glass prism refracting the colours of light; they act as a magnifying glass that scrutinizes and dissects realities that are as atypical as they are authentic.

The title roles in his works have been held by actors who meet industry beauty standards (Jared Leto, Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Vanessa Paradis, etc.), but instead of highlighting these actors’ physiques, Vallée likes to transform and challenge them through their acting and their ability to embody vulnerability and contradiction.

Jean-Marc Vallée and Reese Witherspoon
Director Jean-Marc Vallée with actor Reese Witherspoon at a press conference for the September 2014 release of ‘Wild’ in Toronto.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Hannah Yoon

Vallée’s filmography explores different forms of distress through individuals who go on an initiatory journey, literally, as in Wild (2014) or figuratively, as in C.R.A.Z.Y and Demolition (2015). His protagonists are flawed and in search of meaning. They may have entered into an extramarital relationship like Madeline in Big Little Lies, or struggle with addiction like Ron in Dallas Buyers Club or Camille in Sharp Objects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgljcMqPG98
Amy Adams plays alcoholic journalist Camille in the series ‘Sharp Objects’.

Vallée was careful to show their humanity from the very first minutes. His films and episodes almost always begin with a breath, a voice or a humming, which immediately provides an opportunity for the audience to experience the subjectivity of his characters. As for the soundtracks, a key element of his filmography, they are almost always intradiegetic, that is, the characters hear it and they are often the ones who play it. The audience is invited to discover the characters in a different way, through their tastes and their musical choices.

Cinema as an act of communication

If Vallée’s films are so moving, it is because cinema and television were, for him, an act of communication. Even during scriptwriting, the filmmaker showed he was conscious of his future readers, saying he was concerned with providing a pleasant reading experience. From the moment Vallée’s works are put into words, they become part of a dialogue between a sender and receivers. This empathetic vision of scriptwriting proves that the strength of Vallée’s cinema lies above all, in establishing contact between individuals.

Jean-Marc Vallée and Jake Gyllenhaal
Actor Jake Gyllenhaal and director Jean-Marc Vallée during the promotion of the film ‘Demolition’ at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Concern for the audience was also central to his shoots, where Vallée said he made sure to respect the physical distance between camera and actors (and thus between characters and audience) in order to convey the right emotion. Some actors have done multiple projects with Vallée, showing their appreciation of his work. But more importantly, this reassured audiences. Actors Michel Laperrière and Émile Vallée, for example, played similar roles in C.R.A.Z.Y. and Café de Flore, creating a comforting déjà-vu effect for the audience, weaving links between the different stories.

In the editing process, Vallée created an additional layer of meaning through the use of brief flashbacks that gave access to the characters’ thoughts, and through certain choices that gave the films a more ironic tone. For example, in C.R.A.Z.Y., a passage from the opera L’Elisir d’Amore plays as Raymond turns over the Christmas table. Vallée did not seem to feel the need to lead his audience into emotion. Instead, the dramatic effect is accentuated by the contrast between the savagery shown on the screen and the dignified tone of the soundtrack. Vallée trusted his audience and enjoyed creating puzzles for them, letting them draw their own conclusions.

The gift of cinema

Vallée’s filmography offers the audience a complex experience of decentring, while creating a stylistic coherence between the different narratives. During a 2013 interview on the Québec talk show Tout le monde en parle, when asked about his choice of themes, Vallée answered with one word: “humanity.” His films are above all an ode to human complexity.

Reflecting on his career during a master class, he said he considered himself privileged and hoped that his stories would help him “give back a little.” For Vallée, storytelling was truly a gift, meaning not only a great ability, but, above all, something he would leave behind.



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Blurry, morphing and surreal – a new AI aesthetic is emerging in film

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Blurry, morphing and surreal – a new AI aesthetic is emerging in film


Type text into AI image and video generators, and you’ll often see outputs of unusual, sometimes creepy, pictures.

In a way, this is a feature, not a bug, of generative AI. And artists are wielding this aesthetic to create a new storytelling art form.

The tools, such as Midjourney to generate images, Runway and Sora to produce videos, and Luma AI to create 3D objects, are relatively cheap or free to use. They allow filmmakers without access to major studio budgets or soundstages to make imaginative short films for the price of a monthly subscription.

I’ve studied these new works as the co-director of the AI for Media & Storytelling studio at the University of Southern California.

Surveying the increasingly captivating output of artists from around the world, I partnered with curators Jonathan Wells and Meg Grey Wells to produce the Flux Festival, a four-day showcase of experiments in AI filmmaking, in November 2024.

While this work remains dizzyingly eclectic in its stylistic diversity, I would argue that it offers traces of insight into our contemporary world. I’m reminded that in both literary and film studies, scholars believe that as cultures shift, so do the way we tell stories.

With this cultural connection in mind, I see five visual trends emerging in film.

1. Morphing, blurring imagery

In her “NanoFictions” series, the French artist Karoline Georges creates portraits of transformation. In one short, “The Beast,” a burly man mutates from a two-legged human into a hunched, skeletal cat, before morphing into a snarling wolf.

The metaphor – man is a monster – is clear. But what’s more compelling is the thrilling fluidity of transformation. There’s a giddy pleasure in seeing the figure’s seamless evolution that speaks to a very contemporary sensibility of shapeshifting across our many digital selves.

Karoline Georges’ short film ‘The Beast.’

This sense of transformation continues in the use of blurry imagery that, in the hands of some artists, becomes an aesthetic feature rather than a vexing problem.

Theo Lindquist’s “Electronic Dance Experiment #3,” for example, begins as a series of rapid-fire shots showing flashes of nude bodies in a soft smear of pastel colors that pulse and throb. Gradually it becomes clear that this strange fluidity of flesh is a dance. But the abstraction in the blur offers its own unique pleasure; the image can be felt as much as it can be seen.

2. The surreal

Thousands of TikTok videos demonstrate how cringey AI images can get, but artists can wield that weirdness and craft it into something transformative. The Singaporean artist known as Niceaunties creates videos that feature older women and cats, riffing on the concept of the “auntie” from Southeast and East Asian cultures.

In one recent video, the aunties let loose clouds of powerful hairspray to hold up impossible towers of hair in a sequence that grows increasingly ridiculous. Even as they’re playful and poignant, the videos created by Niceaunties can pack a political punch. They comment on assumptions about gender and age, for example, while also tackling contemporary issues such as pollution.

On the darker side, in a music video titled “Forest Never Sleeps,” the artist known as Doopiidoo offers up hybrid octopus-women, guitar-playing rats, rooster-pigs and a wood-chopping ostrich-man. The visual chaos is a sweet match for the accompanying death metal music, with surrealism returning as a powerful form.

Doopiidoo’s uncanny music video ‘Forest Never Sleeps’ leverages artificial intelligence to create surreal visuals.
Doopiidoo

3. Dark tales

The often-eerie vibe of so much AI-generated imagery works well for chronicling contemporary ills, a fact that several filmmakers use to unexpected effect.

In “La Fenêtre,” Lucas Ortiz Estefanell of the AI agency SpecialGuestX pairs diverse image sequences of people and places with a contemplative voice-over to ponder ideas of reality, privacy and the lives of artificially generated people. At the same time, he wonders about the strong desire to create these synthetic worlds. “When I first watched this video,” recalls the narrator, “the meaning of the image ceased to make sense.”

In the music video titled “Closer,” based on a song by Iceboy Violet and nueen, filmmaker Mau Morgó captures the world-weary exhaustion of Gen Z through dozens of youthful characters slumbering, often under the green glow of video screens. The snapshot of a generation that has come of age in the era of social media and now artificial intelligence, pictured here with phones clutched close to their bodies as they murmur in their sleep, feels quietly wrenching.

A pre-teen girl dozes while holding a video game controller, surrounded by bright screens.
The music video for ‘Closer’ spotlights a generation awash in screens.
Mau Morgó

4. Nostalgia

Sometimes filmmakers turn to AI to capture the past.

Rome-based filmmaker Andrea Ciulu uses AI to reimagine 1980s East Coast hip-hop culture in “On These Streets,” which depicts the city’s expanse and energy through breakdancing as kids run through alleys and then spin magically up into the air.

Ciulu says that he wanted to capture New York’s urban milieu, all of which he experienced at a distance, from Italy, as a kid. The video thus evokes a sense of nostalgia for a mythic time and place to create a memory that is also hallucinatory.

Andrea Ciulu’s short film ‘On These Streets.’

Similarly, David Slade’s “Shadow Rabbit” borrows black-and-white imagery reminiscent of the 1950s to show small children discovering miniature animals crawling about on their hands. In just a few seconds, Slade depicts the enchanting imagination of children and links it to generated imagery, underscoring AI’s capacities for creating fanciful worlds.

5. New times, new spaces

In his video for the song “The Hardest Part” by Washed Out, filmmaker Paul Trillo creates an infinite zoom that follows a group of characters down the seemingly endless aisle of a school bus, through the high school cafeteria and out onto the highway at night. The video perfectly captures the zoominess of time and the collapse of space for someone young and in love haplessly careening through the world.

The freewheeling camera also characterizes the work of Montreal-based duo Vallée Duhamel, whose music video “The Pulse Within” spins and twirls, careening up and around characters who are cut loose from the laws of gravity.

In both music videos, viewers experience time and space as a dazzling, topsy-turvy vortex where the rules of traditional time and space no longer apply.

A car in flames mid-air on a foggy night.
In Vallée Duhamel’s ‘The Pulse Within,’ the rules of physics no longer apply.
Source

Right now, in a world where algorithms increasingly shape everyday life, many works of art are beginning to reflect how intertwined we’ve become with computational systems.

What if machines are suggesting new ways to see ourselves, as much as we’re teaching them to see like humans?





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We’re in a golden age for body horror films – as Demi Moore’s The Substance proves

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We’re in a golden age for body horror films – as Demi Moore’s The Substance proves


In the 1980s, film scholar Barbara Creed coined the term the “monstrous-feminine”. It refers to the way that female monsters are typically portrayed as threatening and disgusting for reasons connected to their bodies and their sexuality. New film The Substance takes a leaf out of Creed’s book by proposing a feminist critique of female experience through the visceral language of the body horror, a sub-genre preoccupied with the transformation, destruction or grotesque exaggeration of the human body.

The Substance is a film about a fading Hollywood star who will go to any lengths to stay beautiful. After having her TV aerobics show cancelled, Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) resorts to a mysterious serum that can create a “better” version of her – a younger double she can inhabit a few days at a time.

As the pull of success and the return of public recognition lure Sparkle away from her older, now abandoned self, horrendous mutations ensue. It seems poignant that the protagonist of this dark parable should be played by Moore, an actor whose looks have long been scrutinised.

In the October issue of Sight and Sound, the film’s director, Coralie Fargeat, explains that it’s not intended as a caricature, but “a mirror of society’s misogynistic mentality”. It really is “that gross … that violent in the real world,” she argues.

Many agree with her. In a review for Film International, film critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas goes as far as to call The Substance a “documentary”, due to its “emotional fidelity”. That is, its ability to make literal the disconnection between body and consciousness caused by ageing, which impacts women particularly negatively.

The trailer for The Substance.

A growing body of films

The Substance is not the only major film in 2024 to be marketed, either fully or in part, as “body horror”. This is surprising because body horror originally emerged as a niche, often independently produced, sub-genre.

Body horror’s gruesome aesthetic and themes of corporeal decay, transformation and mutilation can be off-putting for many viewers. Yet films like Love Lies Bleeding, Tiger Stripes and I Saw the TV Glow (which all had wide releases in 2024) have turned to the sub-genre. Their directors have been drawn to its ability to tell timely stories about the way corporeality, identity and social interactions cannot be separated.

These films are largely about marginalised or maladjusted people. They show how our personal actions and sense of identity are always affected by the availability of role models and the limitations imposed on people by governmental, educational, religious and familial forces. For example, the teenage protagonist in Tiger Stripes rebels against the expectations that, because she is a girl, she should cover her hair, show modesty and be courteous.

From Poor Things and Infinity Pool (both 2023) to Hatching (2022) and Titane (2021), the 2020s are shaping up into something of a new golden age for body horror.

Novelist A.K. Blakemore has written of the rise of “femcore” – a literary trend of “ultraviolent body-horror”. Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts (2020), Alison Rumfitt’s Brainwyrms (2023), Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part (2024) and the anthology Of the Flesh (2024) are included under this label.

And there’s a similar trend emerging in streaming shows, from the episode The Outside from Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (2022) to Alice Birch’s remake of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers (2023).

The body horror in The Substance.
Courtesy of Mubi

A sub-genre with substance

One of the key things that characterises this contemporary wave of body horror is the influx of directors who identify as women and as queer.

There were far fewer women and queer directors in the late 1970s and 1980s, when body horror gained popularity thanks to films like The Evil Dead (1981), The Fly (1986) and Hellraiser (1987), than there are now. This decade has made big moves towards inclusion, and the film industry has been greatly impacted by social movements like Me Too, Trans Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter, even if much work is yet to be done.

Body horror is particularly appealing to creators who would have previously found it difficult to make a living in the world of commercial filmmaking. Filmmakers (including Rose Glass, Amanda Nell Eu, Jane Schoenbrun, Hanna Bergholm, Julia Ducournau, Michelle Garza Cervera, Natalie Erika James, Alice Maio Mackay, Nia DaCosta and Coralie Fargeat) have found a valuable lexicon for feminist, trans-activist and anti-racist messages in the sub-genre. Many of them talk about their work as highly personal – if not based on their direct experience.

The body horror sub-genre is attuned to the violence of social exclusion and discrimination. Its metamorphic, painful, insidious and carnal nightmares help articulate the concerns of a new generation of artists for whom corporeality, and sometimes simply being visible, has become a political statement.

David Cronenberg closed his classic body horror film Videodrome (1983) with the emblematic line: “Long live the new flesh!” He needn’t have worried. It’s here to stay.


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Angry, wise, or plain horny? Zeus comes in many forms onscreen – just as he did in the original myths

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Angry, wise, or plain horny? Zeus comes in many forms onscreen – just as he did in the original myths


With a flash of garish colour and the blaring of an ’80s rock track we are on Mount Olympus, home to the pantheon of ancient Greek gods and goddesses.

But its not the Mount Olympus you’d normally think of. It’s an opulent house with large-screen TVs and gold watches. Overseeing it all is mighty Zeus, the king of the gods, played by Jeff Goldblum.

Netflix’s new six-part series, KAOS, is a brilliant reimagining of classical mythology for the 21st century. Created by Charlie Covell, writer on The End of the F***ing World (2017–19), the series follows six humans who learn they are part of a larger prophecy – their fates at the mercy and whims of the Olympian gods.

Narrated by Prometheus (Stephen Dillane), the series is darkly comedic in its exploration of themes from the original myths, such as power and abuse, gender politics and life after death.

Goldblum’s take on Zeus is mercurial. Powerful, but petulant and selfish, his Zeus is insecure. It’s a fascinating take on the god. “My character is complicated and charismatic, not to mention cruel,” the actor revealed in an interview.

The ancient Greeks themselves were ambiguous about Zeus. He could be a fearful figure or a humorous one. He ended up with dozens of epithets, ranging from Areius (“warlike”) to Zygius (“presider over marriage”), and most commonly Olympios and Panhellenios to signify his divine power over gods and humans alike.

Hollywood has similarly found a variety of ways to present Zeus, but usually in supporting roles (unlike in KAOS, where Zeus takes centre stage). In fact, one early cinematic appearance of the god was at the birth of filmmaking itself, in Georges Méliès’ silent film Jupiter’s Thunderballs (1903).

Zeus the powerful and vengeful god

Zeus (and his Roman equivalent Jupiter) was the god of sky and thunder in the Greek pantheon on Mount Olympus, and the father of many heroes and demigods of classical mythology. His main visual attribute was the lightning bolt, which is hinted at cleverly in a number of scenes in Goldblum’s performance.

The most common portrayal of Zeus in film and television is that of a vengeful and wrathful god who interferes with and manipulates the activities of others.

In Clash of the Titans (1981), a retelling of the myth of Perseus, Zeus (Laurence Olivier) manipulates the gods to support Perseus.

And this continues in the 2010 remake and its sequel, Wrath of the Titans (2012), in which Zeus (Liam Neeson) is an active participant in a plot centred on the struggle against Hades.

In the film Immortals (2011), although Zeus is often detached from the plot and merely observes, he is ultimately roused to action by anger.

Similarly, in the Percy Jackson films and TV series (based on Rick Riordan’s books), Zeus is characterised by his anger directed at Percy as he accuses him of stealing his lightning bolt.

Zeus the lustful abuser

Zeus was, well… there is no other way of saying it… horny. Incredibly horny. Despite the long-suffering protestations of his wife (and sister), Hera, Zeus would go on to father innumerable gods and demigods in the original myths.

His affairs with both divine and mortal women were almost always non-consensual and always ended badly for the seduced woman, who would either immediately die upon seeing Zeus in divine form or suffer the inventive vengeance of Hera. As Susie Donkin explained in the title of her 2020 book: Zeus is a Dick.

Unlike many filmed portrayals of Zeus, KAOS does not shy away from this aspect of his behaviour. But it is perhaps best represented in the adult animated series Blood of Zeus (2020-), in which much of the plot is driven by the aftermath of Zeus’ sexual proclivities.

Zeus the father figure

Hercules (Herakles in Greek) is one of the most filmed characters of all time, so the appearance of Zeus as his father is expected.

Perhaps most fondly remembered by all is Disney’s film Hercules (1997), in which Zeus (voiced by Rip Torn) is a warm and wise father. “For a true hero isn’t measured by the size of his strength, but by the strength of his heart,” he advises his son.

Hercules in New York (1970) is a cult film best known as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first (dubbed) role as the titular strongman in contemporary New York. Here, Zeus (Ernest Graves) is responsible for Hercules’ exile – angry, but wanting the best for his son.

Anthony Quinn played Zeus in the TV movie The Circle of Fire (1994), which kick-started the TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995–99) and its spin-off Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001). Zeus appeared periodically in both. Although Hercules in the series often referred to the neglectfulness of his father, Zeus is still presented as a loving parent in each appearance.

Zeus the comical

Zeus is also perfect to poke fun at. The ancients did it; in Aristophanes’ comedic play The Birds, for example, Zeus’ all-seeing vision is blocked by merely a raised parasol.

Perhaps the best example of this in modern cinema is Russell Crowe’s depiction in the Marvel movie Thor: Love and Thunder (2022). In this campy take, Zeus is all lightning bolts, with a toga that hides very little, and a controversial Greek accent.

But there was also a poignancy in Crowe’s Zeus, such as when he states:

It used to be that being a god, it meant something. People would whisper your name, before sharing their deepest hopes and dreams. They begged you for mercy, without ever knowing if you were actually listening. Now, when they look to the sky, they don’t ask us for lightning, they don’t ask us for rain, they just want to see one of their so-called superheroes. When did we become the joke?

Just as the ancient Greeks had many versions of Zeus, so does the modern world. And Jeff Goldblum’s brilliant performance suggests we certainly haven’t seen the last of Zeus’ thunderbolts onscreen.



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