Picture Claire

This film premiered last night (Sept. 10, 2001) at the Toronto International Film Festival. Tasty and original. An exceptional performance by Lewis in the lead. Also, Mickey Rourke and Camilla Rutherford tear ass in their cameo and supporting roles, respectively. The film is quite simply gorgeous. The colors are rich and the edits are sharp. And this is not to downplay the story, which is entralling. This film is a euphoric ride which will keep you intoxicated until well after the last credits roll. BONUS: Juliette is on the soundtrack!

This is the story of a largely mute French Canadian whose trip to see a one night stand results in her getting mixed up with a smuggling operation gone wrong. The main character risks her life to avoid momentary embarrassment, gives a pep talk to a dog, wanders around the only city in Canada where no one apparently speaks French, has an intense hatred of having her picture taken and frequently fantasizes about being on the Moon. That sounds like the makings of a comedy, right? Unfortunately, Picture Claire is a drama that is all quirky and stylized and sucky. After her apartment is set on fire by a couple of thugs, Claire Beaucage (Juliette Lewis) decides to leave Montreal and ride the bus all night to Toronto. There she hopes to hook up again with Billy Stuart (Kelly Harms), a young photographer she picked up in a Montreal bar one night. Before that happens, Claire winds up in a diner bathroom as smuggler Lily Warden (Gina Gershon) meets an accomplice in the dining area and kills him. Though she doesn't know it, Claire is blamed for the murder and then finds out Billy has a live-in girlfriend. In an amazingly stupid move, Claire ends up swinging from Billy's balcony into the apartment below…which just happens to be where Lily lives. She grabs Lily's purse and flees, unknowingly taking with her the thing Lily was smuggling. As Lily takes off after Claire, two more of Lily's accomplices take off after her and two flatfooted detectives also join in the search for Claire. A lot of lame going hither and yon ensues, resulting in an ending that goes from marginally clever to hugely idiotic in about 15 seconds. The best thing about Picture Claire is the performance of Callum Keith Rennie as one of Lily's accomplices. He plays the character with the flair of a theatrical killer and ends up exactly the way theatrical killers would in the real world. Other than that…ugh. Characters repeatedly have to do incredibly dumb things to get the story from one point to another. For all her carefully established traits, Claire is basically a non-entity played pretty much that way by Juliette Lewis. The script tries to compensate for that by giving the other characters more to do and say, but it never bothers to give the audience any reason to care about any of it. Director Bruce McDonald is also incessantly breaking up the screen into smaller boxes with different images in them. It's a mildly engaging visual technique that gets very old, very fast when it becomes clear that McDonald is only doing it because he thinks it looks cool. Picture Claire isn't an aggressively atrocious motion picture. It's just one of those lame indy flicks that aren't nearly as hip and cool as they think they are. If you've never seen those kind of movies, you might find this one just barely worth your time. However, there are a lot better films out there for you to watch.

This film is just plain not believable. Ms. Lewis who is one of my favorite actresses does not fit here. Her fake French is so annoying and looking for "Billy" really gets on my nerves. I would like for her at least to speak a better form of broken English to keep the plot moving. The direction is so slow and there are long periods of time with no dialogs like when Juliette is hanging from the balcony and dropping her boots to the ground. For me this is one of those films from Toronto that just does not fill the bill. A colorless City that always tries to pass for some were else. Plus how long was Mickey Rourke in the Film maybe about 10 minutes?

Spoilers herein. The core of noir is not visual, rather the notion of a fate that governs. Real movies posit the world first, then build the cinematic values to match. The typical noir has an ordinary person captured in a machine that appears to be intelligently toying with circumstance. The viewer conspires with this fate: those coincidences would not occur if we hadn't foisted the poor souls into a movie. It is a deeply self-referential idea, here emphasized by the hapless victim falling into this world by being photographed. Juliette Lewis tries to be in intelligent films, and that no doubt is why she is here. But she just isn't up to the job technically. It takes the ability to place yourself partly in the world of the film and partly in the space between that world and the world of the viewer. At least there is the intent, but it all collapses in the execution. Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

It figures that a decent Canadian film, which lets face it, is a rare commodity, would me mishandled, neglected and not properly promoted, resulting in its exile into the inter zone of obscurity. Picture Claire is an original, stylish little crime thriller with two solid female leads and a story to tell, a story that has regretfully made its way to far too few audiences. Juliette Lewis plays Claire Beaucage, a confused and awkward French Canadian girl who finds herself in way over her head with dangerous, sexy jewel thief Lily Warden (Gina Gershon, in yet another physically demanding role that adds to my wish that she got a crack at playing Catwoman). Lily is on the run from Laramie (Callum Keith Rennie, the king of charisma) a mobster who wants something she stole, which through circumstance is now in the unwitting hands of Claire. The chase then starts, through the unmistakable streets of Toronto and from one violent encounter to the next. The film is a thriller, and a chase flick at heart, but in that heart it's got an almost old world, European flavour. Claire has quaint, almost Amelie esque inner monologues which give us insight into her character. She doesn't speak English, and everyone around her does, which somewhat alienates her. These interludes give us something to latch onto with this strange girl who is more in the dark about what's going on than even we are, watching from behind our screens. Watch for a profane cameo from Mickey Rourke as Gershon's lowlife partner in crime, a scene stealer as always. Thoroughly overlooked, and a true delight.

Picture Claire is a good movie, with a good storyline and good acting. But when it didn't go into theatres and Bruce MacDonald himself thought poorly upon it, I had to wonder what was wrong with it. (And I wasn't the only one.) I bought it the first moment I saw it in stores. Basically much of the movie's elements aren't up to Bruce MacDonald's standards. Everything he uses to make a good story- the foreshadowing, the slight hinting toward something, the full circle- wasn't as clear in the movie as it was in others as say Hard Core Logo and Dance Me Outside. Some of the things should have been made clearer, such as the reference to the islands, the misogyny of certain characters and their expectations of Claire. The denument itself seemed to fall apart on him. It ended in quite a mess, but the very ending itself, the closing credits, I liked. So the movie has flaws. Most movies do. And it's not up to MacDonald's standards. Does that mean his fans won't enjoy it. No, his fans will still enjoy it. People who aren't fans will still enjoy it. Though somehow it should have been done better it would still have been worth seeing in theatres.

Excellent film , addicted to it best neo noir thriller movie

"Picture Claire" tells of two women whose paths cross in Toronto leading to a mix up which involves innocent but determined Claire (Lewis) in some nefarious skullduggery with a female heavy (Gershon). A noir drama, "PC" has a minimal script and tells most of its story with video and some overdone montaging and other visual effects. Filler is used in lieu of story depth and we're stuck watching a whole lot of running around, hiding, looking for stuff, etc. Lewis plays a French speaker and only utters phrases throughout the film while Rourke, who's high on the roster, gets only a 5 minute role. In spite of all the contrivances and lack of substance, "Picture Claire" does manage a nominal level of entertainment and will appeal most to Lewis or Gershon fans and others into film noir. (C+) Note - The DVD I watched had no closed captions or subtitles.

October 2007 Movie: "Picture Claire" - 2001 Never saw this movie before, then, one night, flipping channels on TV, there it was. On a specialty channel called "BRAVO". It caught my attention immediately and drew my interest to continue watching. Now maybe this is not the type of film your average movie goer is going to enjoy a lot ... but I really enjoyed it ... and if you like "different" or "unique" or "independent" movies - I recommend, watch it. Probably because I am Canadian and have worked and lived a couple of times in both Toronto and Montreal (but am native of neither - I actually come from a small city right in the middle of these two big cities) I have some insight into the people, places, characters, cultures and ways of these two major Canadian cities. I love to watch these "Canadian" movies whose themes involve Toronto & Montreal ... and the differences. (There was another one recently ... Bon Cop Bad Cop ... Good Cop Bad Cop ... en Anglais et aussi en Francais ... both in English and in French ...a sort of Starsky & Hutch film, one Cop from Toronto, one from Montreal ... see it! ) Tales of Two Cities ! T.O. and M.O. - love those . Back to "Picture Claire" ... Lead actress ... I would have swore she was a real Quebec girl/fille from Montreal. But I understand she's actually not! Well done! Well acted. Well played. Quebec character, dress, attitude, French, accent, slang and all. She plays the quick, smart, intuitive, Quebec girl ... with emotional intelligence. Knows a lot more than you think ... and can figure out a heck of a lot more in a second - just with a glance - just by looking at you ... ( It's a real character you know! ). Before reading all the other comments on this film, I too thought there were just too many "coincidences" to make the film actually believable ... but hey ... it's a movie... a story to thrill and entertain also ... and FATE can do some amazing things sometimes ... and stranger things have happened - I'm sure. I guess that's one of the points the film is trying to make. The other neat little things in the movie - keep you thinking and entertained. And are a good study, I'm sure, for Cinema class. Probably this is a good movie to study. Take note Drama teachers! example. The little dog and the red shoes. The split screens showing Claire's dreams, wishes, or anticipations - visions of what the future might be. I also liked the minimal dialogue. It allowed you to watch, follow, and understand, and put together the story from the images and the happenings ... not cluttered with dialogue. Keeps you thinking. It's not spoon fed to you with words. The other actors and parts ... all seemed like real people ... and well played. Made the movie seem real, believable and enjoyable, and drew you in. The themes of personal identity and image ... Claire taking on the role of the other lady ... and the "take the money and run off to some Caribbean paradise" story ... of course we're all wanting Clarie to get away to a new life. We're cheering for her. We get the impression that Claire is looking to find herself and also to find a new life. Claire is looking for something ... like we all are ... And we all want her to find these things. She becomes like the "Bad guy/girl on the run" who we all want to get away. ( sort of like Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw in "The Getaway" movie from 1972 ) Finally all the shots of Toronto .. Union Station ... downtown, Spadina Street ... all the rest ... brought back memories of that place where I once lived and worked ... T.O. ... Go visit sometime ... Yours Truly ... Mr Vanwinkles (not my real name) email: mrvanwinkles@hotmail.com ( ... and personally I thought the film was much better than most of the reviews I've read on the internet. It has a style and story much to my liking! and yes ... a possible cult following ...)

Picture Claire is an amazing movie by an amazing director, Bruce McDonald. The writer is Semi Chellas, and the main actor is Juliette Lewis, as Claire, a French Canadian woman who has come to Toronto to look for her lover, a photographer named Billy Stuart. Juliette's performance is believable, and she speaks French and a little broken English throughout the entire movie. She arrives in Toronto and gets into a wrong place, wrong time scenario, getting tangled into a crime she didn't commit. She also is shocked about her lover. Mickey Rourke and Gina Gershon play two sleazy underworld types, and Callum Keith Rennie is at his best here as a venomous low level mobster and womanizer. The film may have a recycled plot, but it works here because of the strong performances from both the leading and supporting cast, and also because of nifty film tricks and special effects...