“Why destroy the one who has always loved you too much?”
While I may have found issues with the story, the film looked great and did an expert job at visually juxtaposing the two worlds that Anna belonged to.
Anna Kiri is a film that I really wanted to love. Directed by Francis Bordeleau, the Montreal-set thriller follows Anna Kiri (Catherine Brunet) as she struggles between her past and future. Alongside her older brother Vincent (Maxime de Cotret), Anna has gotten involved in the underground world of crime and illegal drug sales, and she spends time with her brother and his group of adrenaline-chasing friends, not wanting to abandon him and also believing that she has nowhere else to go. This quickly becomes the central conflict of the film, and we are told through Anna’s narration (a stylistic choice that is present throughout the whole film, and works better in some moments than others) that she absolutely adores and idolizes her brother, despite his proclivity for chaos. Yet it was, at least for me, very difficult to actually feel that love (even if it might be a toxic one) in any of their scenes together. They argue, and Vincent routinely threatens and physically intimidates Anna. The film moves at a breakneck pace, and while this means we get right into the action, it also means that the relationships that are seemingly so important never get a chance to develop in any meaningful way on screen.
What did work for me were some of the other technical and stylistic choices. While I may have found issues with the story, the film looked great, and did an expert job at visually juxtaposing the two worlds that Anna belonged to: the world of crime was dark and grimy, with the camera moving chaotically through these scenes, and the literary world was lighter yet somehow artificial, staged in a way that made the viewer uneasy even though it should have felt inviting. All of this was great, and I also thought the choice to visually depict Anna’s notebook entries as ‘doodles’ on top of scenes worked really nicely, and complemented the voiceovers.
Catherine Brunet’s performance as Anna was certainly the best of the film, and she did an impressive job anchoring the story as Anna herself was being moved so quickly through various conflicts and settings. There is definitely an interesting story in here, somewhere—a young woman with a traumatic past grows up on the streets and is eventually discovered by someone in the literary world interested in mentoring her—but the film tries to tell it too quickly for its own good, not letting us get to know the ‘old’ Anna before thrusting her into a new life via a 365-day flash-forward only 35 minutes in. The film’s villain, too, just really didn’t work for me, and what could have been a menacing character was written instead to be one that felt cliché and superficial. Because of this, what should have been a terrifying final twist ended up feeling predictable and unsatisfying, having to rely on the fear factor of a villain that wasn’t scary at all.
Anna Kiri is definitely a film looking to try out different things, both narratively and stylistically. Unfortunately, though, I think it focused on the style side of things (such as the montages of vintage images and videos that were inserted into several scenes), and this came at the expense of telling a well-constructed story.
Anna Kiri had its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival and will be in theatres September 26, 2025.
Photos: DOP / Miguel Henriques
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