A Film for Max

Can domestic life be made visible—even cinematic? In a filmic exploration that flirts with the experimental, Montreal-based British filmmaker Derek May turns his camera toward his family life. The central figure of this intimate world is first and foremost his wife, Québécoise Patricia Nolin, whose delightful accent and reflections transform her into the heroine of a Cassavetes film gone European, or a Godard film gone American. Refusing the classic narrative structure in order to show life as it appears—disordered, fragmented, unstable—May moves restlessly in front of the camera, questions the meaning of life, or plays lightly with his wife. A Film for Max is also a kind of legacy to their son, Max, whose existence as a young child offers glimpses of the joyful vitality present in all beings. The adult life depicted in the film bears witness to a loss of innocence, despite the disorderly attempts to stay afloat: friendship, creation, family, play. Above all, it is about not taking oneself too seriously—even in the adventure that is cinema. With cinematography by Martin Duckworth and Claude Beaugrand, the film also bears witness to a particularly fertile period: the early 1970s, with its profound social and aesthetic upheavals.

Naomie Décarie-Daigneault
Tënk's Artistic Director