MIFF Session 5: PRAYER FOR A LOST MITTEN

What have you lost that you wish you could find again. We begin at the lost property office of the Montreal Metro as faces appear at the service window and ask for personal belongings, sometimes fruitfully but mostly not. Through the snow swept streets of the city we enter the homes of people at, dinner or just enjoying a gathering with drinks and this question is addressed. Soon we hearing of lost love, the death of a parent, time, a family's warmth and further, intercut with scenes of the wintry nightscape of the northern city.

This beautiful piece about the many faces of loss, from the tiny to the life-changing, belies the lightness of its presentation. A family dinner seems to be going so amiably that we're happy enough to just go with the flow but soon we are hearing of a death scene told so plainly that its poignancy stings. It would be dismissive to describe it as an impressionist film as, beneath its gorgeously deep black and white cinematography and almost fetishistic celebration of winter nights, there beats a blood red heart. This film about loss is, as it must be, also a film about discovery, what has been found in the state of loss and where it has led. A choir sings outside on the footpath. When the conductor points to a singer, she or he sings of what they have lost. The harmony rises and builds to a tall, wide wave as one woman takes a lead and sings to an impassioned close. She's lost a binder but everyone around her knows it's more.

Finally, we hear from a teenager whose answer to the question is an impossible wish. We watch as he and his freinds stroll off into the shadows and the snow shovelling bulldozer pushes the frozen white drifts to the sides of the roads as the new snow falls. The only reason I wouldn't see it again is that it has worked so well the first time. I pegged this as a perfect 11 a.m. screening at the Forum film which is at least when I watched it.