REVIEW: Gabrielle (2013, Dir. Louise Archambault)

Gabrielle is a young woman living in respite care. She's social, talkative, relatively carefree. She sings in Les Muses Chorale, a choir for people living with intellectual disabilities. In the sun bathed music room her warmth, her movement, her singing stands out. She is the kind of embracing soul who lives life as if she could never be unhappy. But Gabrielle is about to find love.

Writer/director Louise Archambault's second feature is an exceptionally well-observed, beautifully rendered portrait of a young woman suddenly faced some rather epic life-evolving changes. Pitched as narrative but with the naturalism of direct cinema, Gabrielle astonishes with its disarming central performances.

The first and most startling of these is from Gabrielle Marion-Rivard, the young woman with Williams syndrome, around whom Archambault has constructed her film. Marion-Rivard has quite justly picked up this year's Canadian Screen Award for Best Actress. I'm sure if more people could experience her touchingly open screen presence she'd be garnering many more awards. She's fresh, she's open and she's absolutely and unashamedly moving. And, as if that was not enough, her chemistry with her similarly impressive (and impressively clear-eyed) co-star, Alexandre Landry, practically crackles with electricity. Their burgeoning relationship is a heart-expanding core for this delightful film.

It is not all beer and topless bedroom dancing though. In the film's more sombre quarters, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin is superb as Gabrielle's sister, Sophie. She's Gabrielle's secondary caregiver outside the respite home and her chemistry with Marion-Rivard is, again, extraordinarily touching (you should be noticing the common element here). Their relationship, slowly buckling under the weight of competing responsibilities and Gabrielle's desperation for independence, provides much of the film's drama and accounts for at least half a box of tissues by the time the credits roll.

Rest assured, the other half won't go to waste because Gabrielle's exceptional musical performers, including Marion-Rivard and Landry, aren't shy about sawing at the heartstrings. Archambault has positioned the film's choral performances, most of them in preparation for the choir's upcoming engagement with Québécois singer, Robert Charlebois, to reflect the themes of the surrounding drama so the pieces quickly gain emotional resonance. Their repeated refrains build a subtle rhythm into the film and ultimately bring a satisfying sense of completion to the Gabrielle's hand clapping finalé.

Gabrielle is simple film. It deals with simple themes, it plays out simply and it draws out a deeply emotional response through its director's unadorned, unhampered approach. Just like her title character and her lead actress, Archambault is not afraid to treat big concepts with a bracing naivety. In doing so, she cuts incisively to the quick and presents her tactile love story unapologetically, taking little note of the white-noise of cultural taboo. In doing so she delivers a film of genuine honesty and warmth. Rewarding cinema.

★★★★

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