In the opening shots of "Familia," director Louise Archambault poses an interesting question. When we have children, do we pass on simple genetic traits like hairy knuckles or hitchhiker's thumb? Or does the transfer include pieces of our own personalities?
If "Familia" had answered these questions, I think it would have been a much more interesting film. Instead, when I had finished watching it, the only question I had (a question that also remained unanswered) was "What the hell is wrong with these people?"
The movie focuses on the relationships between friends, mothers and daughters. On one end of the spectrum, we have Michele (Sylvie Moreau), a compulsive gambler, and generally irresponsible woman. Her daughter Marguerite (Mylene St-Sauveur) is a fourteen-year-old club kid who thinks herself more streetwise than she truly is. After deciding her boyfriend is being abusive after he accidentally hits her with a car door and refuses to give her any more money to waste on the gambling machines, Michele decides to move to California with Marguerite. Michele's lack of funds ensures that they never get that far, and instead end up staying with Janine (very convincingly played by Macha Grenon), a childhood friend of Michele's.
Janine is the exact opposite of Michele. She is a successful interior designer with two kids and a mostly-absent husband. Where Michele is charming and lenient (albeit rather leechlike) Janine is frigid and controlling, as evidenced by her failed relationships with her husband and children. Her daughter, Gabrielle (Juliette Gosselin), is sweet and obedient, but befriending Marguerite gives her the opportunity to break out of her shell, which she does in grand rebellious fashion.
"Familia" was a hard movie for me to watch. While it does explore the topic of relationships, it's just as much an exercise in Bad Parenting 101. It shows how leniency with a child, or, alternatively, fierce control, can do nothing to help the development of a kid. It was also difficult to like the characters. Both Michele and Janine are almost too flawed to be sympathetic. While I did feel sorry for Janine having to put up with the frustrating and generally obnoxious Michele, her totalitarian view of her family was just as frustrating as any time I saw Michele gambling away her paychecks on slot machines or poker.
In fact, the best parts of "Familia" come right at the very end, when both the women witness the consequences of their family relationships. While Janine's life falls apart at the seams in a long, downward spiral that ends in some nasty confrontations, Michele learns the necessity of responsibility, and realizes that if she is to save Marguerite from becoming like her, she needs to step up and put just as much importance on her child as on herself.
As far as the performances go, Macha Grenon's Janine was far and away the most impressive. She really gets the best dramatic scenes, since she's the one who gets to break down and watch the life she's built for herself fall around her. Moreau is good as Michele, but at the end of the movie, it was Grenon's performance that I remembered the most. As much as I really disliked Janine, her situation made me feel for her.
"Familia" is just as much a drama about the importance of relationships as it is a great example of two very different ways in which a person can screw up their lives and, unfortunately, the lives of their children. The film presents some interesting situations, but it lacks truly sympathetic characters. Had I not wanted to slap the two women nearly every time they made a decision or alienated their kids, I might have enjoyed the movie more. As it was, "Familia" is a movie I watched with gritted teeth.