Mon Oncle Antoine
Director: Claude Jutra
Year Released: 1971
Rating: 1.0
In the fruitful, generally charming genre of the coming-of-age movie comes this frigid entry from Canada, about a teenage boy and one particular Christmas holiday he spends with his Uncle. It's fragmented and lacks a personality: it contains a bunch of lonely people cooped up together without much to do - even the unveiling a seasonal window display in the local general store actually draws a crowd (!). Our nondescript, frankly bland lead character has one distinctive moment of bliss (getting to place his hand on a girl's clothed breast) and one trauma (dealing with the corpse of a dead teen), but it's unclear what he learns from any of this other than, "I need to get out of Canada." I'm not sure which critics or film fans keep voting this the "greatest Canadian film of all time," but those viewers need to brush up on the work of David Cronenberg, Norman McLaren, Atom Egoyan, Michael Snow and Denys Arcand (to name but five) immediately.
