Load of rubbish!!

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Denis Villeneuve's weakest movie.a movie trying to display about sin and redemption.like all other 'guilty spoiled female protagonist' movies, she transformed into a new person.and then the funniest thing.our revenge seeking hero (who realized his enemy is a woman instead of a man) fall in love with her, have sex with her and that's the end of the film.

After watching the excellent movie "Prisoners" from 2013 from director Denis Villeneuve I decide to look up what else he made for movies. Prisoners was exceptionally good so I thought his other work would be of the same level but with Maelström I am a bit disappointed. It's not that it is a bad movie or so, but it's just not in the same ballpark then Prisoners. It's a movie that you watch once and then forget about it. The cast of Maelström is good, nothing bad at all to say about the actors. Marie-Josée Croze gives a good performance, playing the woman that has big issues in her life. The narrating voice from the fish played by Pierre Lebeau works perfectly well in the story. Even though French is my native language I had trouble to understand some actors with their Canadian accent. I could understand Pierre Lebeau and Marie-Josée Croze very well but Jean-Nicolas Verreault and his accent from Quebec I couldn't understand a word of his mumbling. Anyways, it doesn't matter to the story or movie, because I could just read the English subtitles, but Maelström is just an average movie to me.

Made in Québec, Maelström tells the story of Bibiane Champagne, a young entrepreneur stuck in a downward spiral leading to a suicide attempt and redemption through a relationship with a man whose father she hit and killed while drunk driving.Denis Villeneuve's film opens with his lead character undergoing an abortion. We then see Bibiane giving a phone call in the elevator declaring: "It's settled." Showing up at work, she is fired by her business partner, her own brother, for bad management that cost the clothing company $200 000. Bibiane is comforted by her friend Claire, an intellectual who's had three abortions herself. Claire has come to pamper Bibiane and help her get back to normal. "You must not feel guilty" she insists. But Bibiane is feeling increasingly bad. Claire throws a party in her apartment and Bibiane drinks heavily to daze her conscience. On her way home, she hits an old fishmonger crossing the street and drives on, leaving him half-conscious on the road. The man manages to get home and dies sitting in his kitchen chair. Bibiane is under shock. Her guilt reaches a peak, so she takes some drugs and heads to the discotheque to meet someone and have sex. Unable to escape her inner turmoil and wanting to get rid of any evidence of the hit and run, she tries to push her car into the Saint-Lawrence River. After some unsuccessful efforts, she resolves to drive it into the water and kill herself at once. The young woman survives and gets another chance at life. When Bibiane goes to the funeral home where her victim's ashes are, she meets the fishmonger's son Evian and pretends to be a neighbour. Evian asks her to help him sort his father's things, and she accepts. Love is kindled and Bibiane finally admits she is the murderer, asking Evian to kill her. Evian is torn, but chooses to forgive her and allows Bibiane to find grace.Put into context, this is a surprising film. Bibiane evolves in the most atheistic place in North America, a province with one of the highest suicide rates in the world and where one baby out of four is aborted. Christian symbolism is nonetheless very present in this story, as if Québec's conscience was screaming out for salvation. We see Bibiane numerous times in the shower trying to get clean, but only reconciliation through the son leads her to freedom.

The film opens with a large, visibly injured, and obviously fake fish talking directly to the audience. Nearby a man is cutting up fish. The talking fish says that his life in nearly over, and he would like to tell a "pretty" story with his last breaths. Then we cut to a beautiful woman, in a doctor's office. We soon figure out that she is having an abortion. As we see the fetal matter being incinerated and her leaving the building, the grossly perky song "Good Morning Starshine" begins to play. Okay... This is obviously not going to be your normal film.The woman is named Bibiane (Marie-Josée Croze), and she turns out to be the main character. Perhaps related to the abortion, it soon becomes clear that her life is not going too well right now. Not long into the film she is removed from her position in the family business, a chain of upscale clothing stores, by her brother (although at first I thought he was her estranged or ex-husband).Most reviews or plot summaries go into more detail about events that occur in the middle and end of the film, but I'll keep it to that. There are some rather unlikely coincidences along the way, in case that sort of thing bothers you. And there is a distinct water theme, which is not surprising given the title. I would classify the film as primarily a drama, since the laughs are mostly at surprising events rather than strictly funny ones, and because the film kept me feeling slightly uncomfortable throughout.Marie-Josée Croze is very good here. The cinematography is excellent, with at least one shot that took my breath away. The story and the direction, both by Denis Villeneuve, on the other hand, are somewhat suspect. Besides the aforementioned coincidences, several scenes are juxtaposed in a seemly random manner, and you can't figure them out until later if then. Now this could just be a mechanism to get you to think, and in the wake of Memento (which came out at about the same time as this film) one is becoming used to the idea of the film structure mirroring the main character's thought processes. I'm not sure I completely buy this argument, but I'll give it a little leeway.This film won the best picture, direction, cinematography, screenplay, and actress awards in Canada at their equivalent of the Academy Awards, but it is only just now getting to the United States, where it is expected to play for a very short time. In the San Jose, CA area it is expected on May 17th.Seen on 5/5/2002 at the Camera Cinema Club in San Jose, CA.