With choices such as Andrew Cividino’s Sleeping Giant and Stephen Dunn’s Closet Monster, several of the films at this year’s Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival took audiences on a tour of the Canadian suburbs, highlighting the struggles of the children and adolescents growing up in them. Philippe Lesage’s Les démons was among this selection of Canada’s coming of age stories, illustrating nine-year-old Félix’s thoughts, relationships, and, most prominently, his fears while growing up in 1980s Montréal.
Félix’s experiences are relatable to viewers and recognizable as common childhood encounters: Félix develops a crush on his physical education teacher, is doted on by his two older siblings, and spends large amounts of time at the playground and the community pool with the other children in his class. However, what controls Félix and pushes him to feel like an outsider next to his peers are his countless fears and anxieties. Many of Félix’s concerns are rooted in his innocence and naivety and can be soothed by crawling into bed with his parents after a nightmare. In a touching scene, Félix becomes convinced that he has contracted HIV after a classmate’s presentation on the topic, and returns home to hide in his closet until his older sister can coax him out. Other causes of Félix’s uneasiness turn out to be quite real, however, as he matures enough to observe strains in his parents’ relationship, and starts to understand the reports of child abductions in the area that circulate on the news.
Lesage expertly weaves each of these elements of the film together, allowing the story to meander between emotions and events. He treats Félix’s innocent and more serious fears with equal sincerity and, in this way, accurately portrays a complex and messy childhood experience. Les démons does not follow a polished or particularly straightforward narrative, but it is precisely this approach that makes the film so immersive and charming. The film unfolds in the way life usually does: cluttered with a whole host of intertwining adventures.
Adding to this sense of immersion and realism is Lesage’s use of a wide-angle lens and long, watchful shots, which patiently observe the events in the film as they unravel. Lesage’s previous experience lies in documentary filmmaking, and this is beautifully evident in Les démons, his first narrative feature film to be released. Many events of the film’s story and aspects of Félix’s personality are autobiographical for Lesage, and he uses locations from his own childhood for many of the film’s scenes.
Lesage appropriately purposes a variety of horror movie techniques and atmospheric elements to motivate the audience to share in Félix’s worries and fear. Félix dreams of a ghostly boy crouching in the corner of his bedroom at night, and later a mysterious car with bright headlights and a loud engine chases him and his brother down a darkened street. Where Les démons becomes most compelling, however, is when Lesage subverts these tactics, allowing the viewer to be surprised and experience something new. Midway through the film, an abrupt and unexpected shift in perspective to focus on a different character unlocks a much more sinister and shocking plot arc. Lesage also finds a unique way to manipulate the music of the film, overlaying shots of children stretching and dancing in gym class with dramatic symphonies, and leaving the music out entirely in more emotional or sensational moments, allowing the breathing and performances of the actors to speak for themselves. These unexpected scoring choices play out over a lengthy shot, prompting audiences to observe and question these moments in unconventional ways.
As a whole, Philippe Lesage’s Les démons fills a well-deserved spot among the top Canadian films of the year, expressing an accurate and complex childhood experience through exceptional and refreshing techniques. Les démons articulates the fears and demons internalized in many of us, combining the innocence of childhood with a variety of new and much more adult concerns—from bullying and schoolyard friendships to sexuality, abuse, and crime.
