2023-09-01 00:00:00
Having opened the Fantasia International Film Festival, Polaris, by KC Carthew, is a singular work featuring Viva Lee, Khamisa Wilsher and Muriel Dutil.
In 2144, the planet is plunged into an eternal winter. A young girl, Sumi (Viva Lee), somehow survives in this trying environment with the help of her “mother”, a polar bear, and guided by Polaris, the North Star. As she is taken prisoner by a group of women, she will meet other inhabitants of the desolate planet after having managed to escape, among them Muriel Dutil, another lone traveler.
Polaris is undeniably a work that appeals to the imagination and feelings of moviegoers. The dialogues, entirely in an imaginary language that is not translated, are made up of cries and guttural sounds that constantly bring us back to a primary, animal and sensory level.
Writer and director KC Carthew (The Sun at Midnight, 2016) continues to make spectators lose their bearings by plunging them into a white immensity, in order to better understand the links between humans and nature, in particular with the presence of the bear. This surprising visual and intuitive language turns out to be extremely effective and almost poetic despite its obvious aesthetic affiliation with Mad Max.
We can’t help but think of High Life, by Claire Denis, with Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche, even if the subject and the tone are profoundly dissimilar. In both cases, we lose our footing, in both cases, we learn to understand a particular cinematographic language and in both cases, we are fascinated by a bewitching exercise in style.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
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