Locarno Review: Days Before The Death Of Nicky (2024)
Locarno Film Festival
Corti d’Autore
Sometimes, there is a spoiler in the very title of the film. Sometimes, however, it does not matter at all, because in this case, it is not about the plot, the questions raised there and the answers we are awaiting and expecting to get served on a plate. Denis Côté is not the kind of filmmaker who would do everything to please the absent-minded audience, and his newest short film Days Before the Death of Nicky, premiering at Locarno’s Corti d’Autori section, is not that kind of film either.
All we see is a woman (Erin Marguerite Carter) driving a car through the vast Canadian landscape, crossing nature, the small towns and maybe an occasional city. We usually see the whole action from the same point of view, the camera always faces the front windshield and focuses on a dangling figurine attached to the dashboard. The woman who is probably our titular protagonist makes a stop here and there, goes to a diner to eat, visits friends, watches a boxing match on her mobile phone, and finds a rifle in a cabin… The motivation behind her actions remains unclear, and we do not hear her voice in any way until way into the second half of the film: firstly when she sings a sad song, and near the end when she tries to leave a message but gets cut off.
The presence behind the wheel can be lonely, especially on longer journeys, and one’s mind can start playing tricks. That is exactly the sense Côté generates with his short: although the position of the camera is (almost always) the same, from the quality of the footage it seems like different devices were used to record both the image and the sound. We get to see the whole array of footage quality, from the crisp digital takes, via the blurry camcorder-ones to those filmed on a scratched Bolex stock. The same also goes for the sound, the presence of it at all and the level of the design applied to the recorded material.
It might all seem random and superficially experimental, in the sense that the filmmaker is instructing his cinematographer Vincent Biron to test different equipment in different lighting conditions, creating as many variations as possible. Still, there is a sort of method to the madness. The sense it makes could be read both from the rhythm and pace that gets faster as the ending approaches, so kudos also to the editor Terence Chotard. Ultimately, we might not have learned anything about Nicky, but we went along with her on her journey. And that means something.
Original title:
Jours avant la mort de Nicky
Year:
2024
Runtime:
19’ 33’’
Country:
Canada
Language:
French
Directed by:
Denis Côté
Written
by: Denis Côté
Cast:
Erin Marguerite Carter
Cinematography
by: Vincent Biron
Editing
by: Terence Chotard
Sound
by: Terence Chotard, Clovis
Gouaillier
Production design:
Denis Côté
Produced
by: Denis Côté
Production
company: La Distributrice de films
