Nobody's Violence

In the over 20 years since the French Canadian director first earned international acclaim for his 2005 feature debut Drifting States, Denis Côté has rarely declined the opportunity to take viewers in a direction they didn’t expect. Yet the filmmaker’s latest is so bold and daring in its shifts in tone and tactic, that Nobody’s Violence may be Côté’s most surprising feature to date. 

It also boasts an exceptionally striking lead performance by Larissa Corriveau, the actor whose previous collaborations with the director include Mademoiselle Kenopsia (TIFF ‘23). Corriveau stars as Mira, an enigmatic and largely silent young woman who works for an equally mysterious organization that facilitates requests for euthanasia. Seemingly stone-hearted as she travels from client to client in the film’s eerie dystopian society, Mira nevertheless comes to question her mission after encounters with two unconventional men: Pierric (Xavier Bergeron), a free spirit she meets at a wintry outdoor rave party, and Ludo (Philippe Rebbot), her charismatic and hedonistic boss.

Like these two live wires who come into Mira’s path, Nobody’s Violence exudes a restless, relentless vitality, a quality that only intensifies as the film shape-shifts from sci-fi parable to conspiracy thriller to Buñuelian comedy. Indeed, several scenes — including one set to a vintage banger by Quebec prog-rockers Morse Code — have the electrical charge of a Bacchanalian ritual. It’s therefore hard to imagine a more forceful means of reaffirming Côté’s reputation as one of Canadian cinema’s most reliably exciting talents. 

JASON ANDERSON

Content: mature themes, violence, coarse language, drug use, sexually suggestive scenes