Interchange

A traffic interchange on the edge of Montreal, where multi-lane highways criss-cross and curve around one another, perched on concrete pillars that carry them over the run-down neighbourhood below. A zone that is neither part of the city, nor of the suburbs, more the anonymous space in between. Its precise topography is anyway impossible to grasp, for the camera always clings patiently to the streets. At times, the focus is on pure observation, on watching traffic and pedestrians make their way through sun, shadow and signs as horns parp and engines roar, or alighting on all that indexes life beyond these roads: the missing dog poster in the dandelions, the wreath on the lamppost, the receiver off the hook in the phone box. At others, the directors’ hands are more keenly felt: the people placed in front of the camera carry awareness of it in their poses and the colours are just that little bit heightened, adding a thin layer of artifice to a place already oddly unreal. Perhaps it’s because no one sticks around long enough to detect its quiet appeal, everyone’s in too much of a hurry, as the chanson at the end gently chides: “It’s not only cars that go to 100. Time, too, rushes by.” (Berlinale)