Barmaids (March 20/05)

With Barmaids, filmmaker Simon Boisvert continues his exploration into the way men and women relate to each other - mining the same sort of territory that his previous films dealt with (Stephanie, Nathalie, Caroline and Vincent and Guys, Girls and a Jerk), without resorting to derivativeness.

Alex (Boisvert) is engaged to marry Lyne (Caroline Gendron), despite the fact that he clearly can't stand her. Lyne, for her part, doesn't trust Alex and accuses him of sleeping around whenever he comes home late. As it turns out, Lyne is right to be suspicious; Alex has recently started seeing an actress named Isabelle (Elise Beaumont), though she's made it abundantly clear that she's not interested in anything beyond a casual relationship.

Barmaids marks Boisvert's directorial debut, and he does an effective job of imbuing the film with a hands-off, improvisational vibe (except in a pair of love scenes, in which Boisvert employs an annoying strobe/slow-motion effect). One of the primary weaknesses of both Stephanie, Nathalie, Caroline and Vincent and Guys, Girls and a Jerk involved an unnecessary reliance on superfluous subplots, a problem that has been corrected here. Boisvert places the focus entirely on the dialogue, allowing his characters to talk and talk almost exclusively on the subject of relationships. It's an appropriate choice, particularly since Boisvert has long since proven that he has a good ear for dialogue that sounds authentic.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that the filmmaker has assembled a surprisingly strong cast - with Beaumont and Diana Lewis (a veteran of Boisvert's previous films) giving especially capable performances. The film's only real fault is that it might be a little too talky, as the non-stop barrage of relationship-centric dialogue eventually becomes a little overwhelming. Still, that's a fairly minor complaint for a film that contains an impressive amount of truths and observations that nearly everybody can relate to.