Social Hygiene (Denis Côté, 2021)

The title is a sly joke. While it's true that in the course of Côté's film, an unseen character is described as badly needing a shower, "social hygiene" actually refers to the COVID-19 protocols under which the film was made. Côté makes a discovery: Straub and Huillet were pioneers of social distancing, and although the film is no Othon, it adopts the couple's "actors-holding-forth-in-a-field" approach to narrative construction. The result is awkward, since Social Hygiene seems a bit like a film that was originally conceived to be "normal." 

The main character is Antonin (Maxim Gaudette), a bourgeois layabout who has become a pickpocket. He has one-on-one, long distance conversations with his disapproving sister Solveig (Larissa Corriveau), his wife Eglantine (Evelyne Rompré), his would-be lover Cassiopée (Eve Duranceau), and a disgruntled tax collector (Kathleen Fortin) aiming to haul Antonin to jail. Between the episodes, we see an androgynous young cow-herder (Eleanore Loiselle) who also eventually gets a chance to verbally parry with Antonin.

There's a rather half-hearted use of anachronism in this film, as surreal humor, a formal trope, or perhaps both. Antonin seems to be in contemporary attire, while Eglantine is in an 18th century maiden's dress, and Cassiopée is in a formal gown that seems to maybe date from the 19th century. In short, Antonin's love objects appear to have walked off the set of a Manoel de Oliveira film, and nothing much is made of it. This does jibe with the script itself, which blends the heightened diction of classical European literature with current vernacular and vulgarities. One of the things I consistently admire about Côté is his experimentalism, a willingness to try almost anything. I'm not sure his feints hit the mark this time, but I'm willing to listen to any explanation.