Search The Archive

Search the film archive

The life of a self-absorbed Quebecois man begins to unravel after a visit from a mysterious stranger.

Screened in competition at Berlin, the visually crisp, pointed tragicomedy of Boris Without Béatrice finds uncompromising Canadian stylist Denis Côté (Joy of Man's Desiring, MIFF 2014; Vic+Flo Saw a Bear, MIFF 2013) training his eye on the entitled bourgeoisie.

Successful in life to the point of arrogance, middle-aged businessman Boris has callously neglected his wife, Béatrice (who's suffering from a catatonic depression), to take up an affair with another woman. But when he's called upon by a mystery man – Holy Motors' Denis Lavant – Boris is compelled to change his behaviour or face the consequences. Moving between comedy and psychological thriller, with a dash of Greek myth, Boris Without Béatrice takes audiences on a puzzling journey inside the mind of a man as his existence crumbles.

"Côté, a master of mood, prefers to mete out moral comeuppance through the mere threat of it, sending one petty bourgeois heartbreaker on a path of unlikely redemption." – Indiewire