REQUIEM FOR A HANDSOME BASTARD
Requiem Pour Un Beau Sans-coeur
Having established an international reputation as a leading video artist, Robert Morin now offers us one of the most compelling feature film debuts of recent times.
Known for his preoccupation with working class heroes, humourous twists and casual subversions of documentary notions of reality, Morin turns his incisive wit to the last three days of prison escapee, Regis 'Reggie the Frog' Savoie — small time hood and a man with hugely swollen and perverse appetites. Torture, revenge hits, snorting 12 inch lines of coke with his gangster cronies (who want him back behind bars) and lounging around shooting demented home videos is how Reggie spends his free time as the law enforcement agencies close in.
The film consists of eight parts, eight different points of view shot from the perspective of eye-witness accounts. Morin tells this tale of contemporary crime and punishment in a series of flashbacks and flashforwards, slipping regularly and imperceptibly into the subjective accounts that corroborate, contradict and even compliment each other. Each version of the story reveals not only more about the central character, but also takes us deep inside the perceptions of Reggie's crowd.