Universal Language

Wednesday March 12 @ 7 pm

Preceded by: Samaa

Comedy/Drama
1 hr 29 min – Rated G – Released 2024

Winner of the inaugural Directors’ Fortnight audience award at Cannes this year, Matthew Rankin’s follow-up to his eccentric, surreal The Twentieth Century is a gentle sort of comedy, settling us down in a reimagined Canada where Persian and French are the two official languages… and loneliness is the common currency. In Winnipeg, children set themselves on eccentric quests — or dress like Groucho Marx — to flummox the adults around them, occasionally disrupting a tour group led by the flustered Massoud (Pirouz Nemati) as he does his best to explain the city’s curious landmarks. Meanwhile, in Montreal, government wonk Matthew (played by Rankin himself) quits a job he hates and catches the first bus home to Manitoba to see his mother, only to find his family is not what he thought it was.

Festival audiences will recognize the influence of the Swedish absurdist Roy Andersson and the ’Peg’s own Guy Maddin, all filtered through Rankin’s deadpan comic sensibility. He’s traded the gleeful depravity of The Twentieth Century for something kinder and softer, an affectionate look at a diasporic nation trying to fit itself into a box that can’t contain it. Don’t worry, people still congregate at Tim Hortons. (Always Fresh!) It’s just that their idea of a double-double is a little different.

Rankin’s film encourages viewers to dig deeper and consider the nature of perspective, challenging expectations while also being comforted by the commonplace. It’s this universality that gives the film its English title (Une Langue Universelle in French), but equally the political, social, and even moral ways in which language in this country has been used as both a community builder and a weapon. The film has already generated plenty of attention, winning the top prize when it screened as part of Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight selection, and despite its offbeat nature has been chosen to represent Canada’s official Oscar entry for Best International Feature Film.

Told through interweaving tales that evoke Iranian art films, Wes Anderson’s puzzle-box-like creations, and some of the trademark ennui from the likes of Soviet directors like Tarkovsky, there’s a lot stylistically to unpack from this wild and crazy film. Along with Rankin playing a version of himself, he’s joined by an extraordinary ensemble of child and adult actors alike, including Rojina Esmaeili, Saba Vahedyousef, Sobhan Javadi, Pirouz Nemati, Mani Soleymanlou, and Danielle Fichaud. A deft blend of humor and pathos, Universal Language is an episodic odyssey into the human condition, crafted as a deeply moving tragicomedy about culture and identity, and how it can shift over time.