Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

One thing that struck me right away was the Piscean nature of this film. From the established class of a senior cast, to the somber, swaying, otherworldly music, we are shown a futuristic, nautical Montreal, whose populace regard the maudlin, reflective years of old age as a culturally palpable high art.Within this film runs a very old and carefully veiled central theme: The final stage of the alchemical process known as Rubedo, which ties into to the Jungian concept of the Anima. We witness the male lead, Jacob, in the later years of his life as he meets his muse (or, the other side of his being), incarnated as Avril. After a lifetime of searching for her through his music, she has emerged from his inner, subconscious landscape into the outer world. Jacob's life of music has been a repetitive transmission to his inner feminine by playing the sounds of unique instruments, crafted as abstractions of the female body.These instruments are, by their very form, a contraption of the obsessive, outer-seeking nature of masculinity. Of course, one could make the argument toward an objectification of the female body, however, with the care behind each instrument's creation and their foremost utility of soothing, sensual music, there is shown to be a soft and beautiful goal for this kind of obsession. We behold an ethereal collaboration with an unobtainable "other," which in this case, reveals itself in Avril. She willfully poses for the making of the latest, inspired instrument. In doing so, Avril's action proves to be a conscious step in the blossoming of Jacob's Rubedo, the end to his Great Work. She has an artistic practice of her own, photographing men, nude as they admit their innermost vulnerabilities. This process serves to show us Avril's worldly power to lure men into their destined unraveling. In her own words, Avril's work is to "focus on life, death, time, space, nothingness," all words that point to something larger than a human mind can conceive, hearkening to Avril's being as an emissary for transmutation and one who has arrived to breach the unknown.The word "Rubedo," translates from Latin to mean "the Reddening," the re-introduction of blood and passion, which also holds true in the film's sub-plot: a progression of Earth's space program venturing to Mars. Another astrological cue is worth mentioning here, as April is the time of year that is ruled by planet Mars, the red planet, the planet of passion. Within the landscape of the story, our micro-narrative is Jacob and his meta-journey into his own psychological singularity, the outlying macro-narrative being humanity's evolutionary journey to a foreign planet, long beheld from a great distance. Binding these two poles is Avril, both a real human being and a symbolic entity. Her role in Jacob's life as a revelation serves to mimic mankind's fascination for Mars coming to fruition.The film reaches a critical point when Jacob can no longer play his instrument. Before the film can veer off into questions of virility or conjectures of symbolic impotence and old age, we are offered the opportunity to dig deeper and see that in his meeting Avril, he has found union. His muse stands before him, in the flesh. His old instruments are no longer necessary, for they have completed their task of speaking the Divine Feminine into being. Further, Jacob reveals a surprising confession – he's never had a sexual experience with a woman. All articulate arguments toward a man's sexual conquest manifesting via numerous, fetishizing musical sculptures can be neatly tossed aside as we are brought to a more spiritually significant motivation for Jacob. The abstract instruments become a metaphor to imply he was playing the sounds of his Anima all along, in tandem with his age. Now that he has met her in a profound way, his music shows to have been a process of refining this experience sonically, leading to his departure from the world of the concrete, and entering the realm of symbol. Jacob utters a well-worn line from human history, "I've waited for her my whole life," but here it has less of a cliché underpinning, due to the fact that the woman of whom he speaks is one who leads him to a beautiful nothingness. His life-long artistic pursuit was yearning for a place which, through Avril - his Anima - has finally become a substantial reality. Jacob is able to admit that he is, for the first time, living inside a story that was previously only notes in the air. As in Greek mythology when Amphion had built the walls of Thebes with the plucking of his lyre, Jacob has brought a hidden world to life with his music. However, in Jacob's case, his music did not build walls. It dissolved them, in a determined beckoning of the great abyss.

I saw this sci-fi film at the Mill Valley Festival when it came out, watched it again recently on Amazon and thought it was refreshing, poetic, inspiring, intelligent and highly imaginative. A living comic book that doesn't take itself too seriously, or a modern Georges Méliès' film, a futuristic, steam-punk audiovisual feast! It's an amazing accomplishment and you can see that the filmmaker put a whole lot of love in every frame. Everything about it is different from the regular type of films that are out there and it has some rather unusual ideas about the soul and person that completes us. At its core, it's a love story, a poetic tale, a dream on celluloid. To me, this film is of the same genre as those of two favourite filmmakers of mine: Terry Gilliam and Luc Besson.I can't say enough what an incredible feat in filmmaking I think "Mars & Avril" is. It's stunningly beautiful and haunting, and like nothing I've ever seen. I grew up reading Carl Sagan so I'm an easy target for themes of spiritualism and space. His point was always that humanism and astrophysics aren't mutually exclusive, and this film says this in a very unique way. I'm really amazed at how completely the filmmaker realized this future culture, down to the architecture, fashion and music. The way he conceived the idea of music in the future, informed by and informing physics and science as we know it; the evolution of musical instruments and sounds; the cosmic, almost religious implications of music that have taken hold in this future society; it was all so beautifully imagined. The way he took science fiction and used it not to create wild action sequences and wars, but an emotional love story, really changed the way I now think about the genre.Heavily relying on green screens, "Mars & Avril" is set in a futuristic Montreal, a place that greatly resembles "Blade Runner"'s Los Angeles or "The Fifth Element"'s NYC, a dreamy future city reminiscent of comics anthology 'Metal Hurlant', yet with something new. On a purely aural and visual level, I wouldn't hesitate to call this film visionary. Some of the images made me feel transported to the furthest depths of an alien realm. It's a mirror, a tilted cheval glass, a digital reflection of a damaged dimension, surreal and moving. For English-speaking audiences, I found watching the film with subtitles actually enhanced the French and Belgian-inspired "bande dessinée" aspect of it, so it didn't bug me at all. Worth watching more than once to catch all the subtleties of the plot and visual details.What's most incredible is that the director, Martin Villeneuve (yes, Denis Villeneuve's younger brother), managed to achieve such a quality with a budget of only 2 million... and it was his first feature! It took him seven years. "How I made an impossible film" is a TED Talk by Martin, also worth watching. His talk details the walls he hit with budget and other creative constraints. But he survived, and so did "Mars & Avril", thankfully. I can't wait to see his next films! In my opinion, this one deserves a wider distribution (including a Blu-Ray, please!) and to score above 8 on IMDb. This little gem of a film will be rediscovered once the director has made his first Hollywood hit.For the record, it's worth mentioning that Martin did "violence-free, philosophical sci-fi" with "Mars & Avril" four years before his older brother Denis did with "Arrival", and for 25 times less money, stretching each dollar to unbelievable heights. And for all those wowed by Denis' "Blade Runner 2049", I highly recommend his younger brother's equally mind-blowing sci-fi epic "Mars & Avril".

I extremely enjoyed this movie. I personally do not like slow rhythm movies but I confess I didn't even forward a second. The actors were great the concepts and symbolism all over the movie scenes challenged my mind to think more deeper. The story connected love,music and infinity together. The only lame part was that elevator. it could be sth else. It was more cooler that that girl only existed in Jacob's dream and he could bring her back to reality. It is one of the few movies that show consciousness as a whole new world yet not fully discovered by human. I strongly recommend this movie. I am not an expert to criticize the movie but in general it was a really nice effort and i don't get why its ranking is not over7.that view from the top of the stairs that looked like an infinite spiral was amazing. The ending can be interpreted in many ways. I want to accept that Avril stays alive in real world but there is also the possibility that the real reality was that one Jacob traveled to at the end so he dies and leaves the virtual reality.

I saw this movie a few days ago and the strange and lyric atmosphere of it still haunts me! The music composed by Benoit Charest (Les Triplettes de Belleville) plays a very important part in it; the filmmaker asked him to compose brilliant music and well yes, he really is a genius!Jacques Languirand has created a magnificent character, and the rest of the cast is as excellent. They are filmed in such an intimate way, we dive into their souls. The story is very intelligent, moving and unusual! I was deeply touched by it.Of course this is not what we call a "commercial" movie and will not appeal to the vast majority. Don't expect big action and fights and tons of visual effects. Although it is visually superb, with some effects simply magnificent! The decors were created with such beauty by an established and very skilled comic strip artist. All the little details in costumes, hair add to this incredible vision of a futuristic Montreal.This is all just indescribable! it is for those who like creativity, originality, strangeness and sci-fi, who liked such movies as "Moon", "Immortel (ad vitam)" and "The Man Who Fell to Earth", as well as "Blade Runner" probably, you might like this one very much!