Director: François Rotger (The Passenger)
Screenplay: François Rotger
Producers: Nicolas Comeau, Tom Dercourt
Starring: Laurence Leboeuf, Marina Hands, Daniel Pilon, Torny Ward
MPAA Rating: R
Running time: 107 min.

(4/5)

French Canadian director François Rotger is a bit of a mystery to me. When I first spotted Story of Jen on the DVD release schedule, I was drawn to the fact that this was a Canadian film I’d heard and seen nothing about. Curiosity won out and it paid off for Story of Jen is a powerful piece of work.

Story of Jen, Rotger’s second full length feature, started as a novel based on a combination of fiction and biographical material from one of his friends. As the story developed, Rotger saw his next film and by 2009, the film had premiered at Locarno and Laurence Leboeuf had won a Jutra award for her performance as the film’s titular character.

Jen is a teen girl who doesn’t quite fit in. She wants badly to experience love but no one pays her much attention. As if this typical high school problem wasn’t traumatizing enough, Jen and her mother Sarah are also dealing with the sudden and violent death of her Jen’s father.

A month after the death, his half-brother arrives at their home offering Sarah a helping hand during these tough times. She seems reluctant but agrees and Ian moves into the property though his help is non-existent and he spends his days drinking, smoking and sleeping. Melvin, Jen’s grandfather, is concerned of what people will think of a man living on the property so quickly after the death so he finds the able bodied man a job on a nearby farm. In the meantime, Ian has struck a friendship with Jen who welcomes the advances and silently prays that he will find it within himself to have a relationship with her. The two have an encounter which ends with Ian venturing into the wilderness and Jen returning home to deal with the consequences of their encounter.

There are so many ideas floating around in Rotger’s film that it’s difficult to pick a place to start. At the centre of this story is Jen who is going through a coming of age that is both difficult and unflinchingly blunt. She wants to experience love and she yearns for Ian to choose her at one point even praying for it but it’s pretty clear she’s not fully aware of what her wish might lead to. When the two come together physically, there is no clear indication that the sex is mutual and the fact that Ian takes off into the wilderness immediately afterwards suggests that he’s running away from what he’s done. But is that really his reason for leaving? He has little dialogue throughout the film and once he ventures into the wilderness, we see him trying to survive but we’re never granted the opportunity to see things from his perspective and we can only assume why he’s chancing his survival in the wilderness. Then there’s Sarah who is dealing with the death of her husband. Her character is largely on the edges of this story but it’s clear that the death of her husband has left her shaken. Even though we see the actions of these individuals, the motivation isn’t always clear as the story sticks pretty closely to Jen and the only perspective we see is hers and it too is often grasping to make sense of the situation.

This is a tale of broken people all coming to terms with the consequences of their actions and for some it ends much worse than for others. Story of Jen is a story of loss: of love, of life and of innocence.

I love the look of Rotger’s film which captures small town life and the wilderness that surrounds it. It’s a beautiful, if direct, metaphor for the emotions that Jen is struggling through and though there are some supernatural overtones to the story that seem out of place, Story of Jen still provides more than enough fodder and emotional punch to be memorable. I’m not sure where Rotger’s been hiding but I look forward to catching up with his previous film and whatever he has to offer in the future.

Story of Jen is available on DVD and Blu-Ray on February 22nd.

DVD Extras: None.