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Thanks for the memories!

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The acting in this movie is really good.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

MARS & AVRIL is the arrestingly-gorgeous and hypnotic ROMEO & JULIET of BLADE RUNNER. To say it blew my mind is an absolute understatement. I am passionate about dissecting visuals and iconography and tracking how designs and structure give form to complex sub-texts on multiple levels. However, MARS & AVRIL has fried my mind. The process of understanding the signification and mechanisms behind how the signs and symbols function within this visionary director, Martin Villeneuve's designed narrative, is as explosive as the endlessly-poetic universe he powerfully and viscerally gives a voice to. This is NO film. It's a revolutionary cinematic experience that does not only entertain, but is shape-shifting and life-altering in the way it awakens epiphanies within one's own mind…let alone the intriguing and fascinating explorations into: myth-making, the design and engineering of consciousness, dream vs reality…and the examination of "feedback" as a homage to the actual film-going experience and process…and which story (primary or secondary) unfolds where (on which screen)…and ultimately that the real one is the version that is left, burnt in the retina of our minds…and which we carry within us…long after we have left the theatre and which replays itself over and over again in our minds…even weeks after. MARS & AVRIL is an intriguing, compelling exploration in how decision-making and constraints are the universe's guide to where we need to be and make decisions that ultimately procure ingenuity and move us forward. It is so true, isn't it… that difficulties take us to where we need to be…to ARRIVE at our quantum potential to best breathe life into the core and heart of a given situation…circumstances…story. The way in which Villeneuve developed his vignettes, pictures and concepts in editorial format, and subsequently fleshed them out into a feature "tapestry", is riveting. This film advocates that problems are Allies and not deterrents…and that when you can "arrive" at perceiving reality in this way, well then Life can dance with you. Well, MARS & AVRIL has not danced with me; it catapulted me into an Odyssey of Signification where signs and symbols engineer awakenings, epiphanies…and ultimately string together a consciousness that has a life of its own and that delivers a manifest reality. What Martin Villeneuve achieves with MARS & AVRIL on $2.3 million and over a seven year period within the past few years, is incomparable and unprecedented! This film is a profound, moving experience; a reminder that it is possible to create a space to dream within crazy poetry. If you want to be entertained and riveted in a way that alters your perception of things in life and leaves you with a quantum understanding of how to best navigate through this humbling experience, then MARS & AVRIL is a MUST-SEE. It's the very beautiful, spellbinding, thought-provoking and evocative love story that Rachel and Deckard in BLADE RUNNER 2049 yearn to be heard.

One thing that struck me right away was the Piscean nature of this film. From the established class of a senior cast, to the somber, swaying, otherworldly music, we are shown a futuristic, nautical Montreal, whose populace regard the maudlin, reflective years of old age as a culturally palpable high art.Within this film runs a very old and carefully veiled central theme: The final stage of the alchemical process known as Rubedo, which ties into to the Jungian concept of the Anima. We witness the male lead, Jacob, in the later years of his life as he meets his muse (or, the other side of his being), incarnated as Avril. After a lifetime of searching for her through his music, she has emerged from his inner, subconscious landscape into the outer world. Jacob's life of music has been a repetitive transmission to his inner feminine by playing the sounds of unique instruments, crafted as abstractions of the female body.These instruments are, by their very form, a contraption of the obsessive, outer-seeking nature of masculinity. Of course, one could make the argument toward an objectification of the female body, however, with the care behind each instrument's creation and their foremost utility of soothing, sensual music, there is shown to be a soft and beautiful goal for this kind of obsession. We behold an ethereal collaboration with an unobtainable "other," which in this case, reveals itself in Avril. She willfully poses for the making of the latest, inspired instrument. In doing so, Avril's action proves to be a conscious step in the blossoming of Jacob's Rubedo, the end to his Great Work. She has an artistic practice of her own, photographing men, nude as they admit their innermost vulnerabilities. This process serves to show us Avril's worldly power to lure men into their destined unraveling. In her own words, Avril's work is to "focus on life, death, time, space, nothingness," all words that point to something larger than a human mind can conceive, hearkening to Avril's being as an emissary for transmutation and one who has arrived to breach the unknown.The word "Rubedo," translates from Latin to mean "the Reddening," the re-introduction of blood and passion, which also holds true in the film's sub-plot: a progression of Earth's space program venturing to Mars. Another astrological cue is worth mentioning here, as April is the time of year that is ruled by planet Mars, the red planet, the planet of passion. Within the landscape of the story, our micro-narrative is Jacob and his meta-journey into his own psychological singularity, the outlying macro-narrative being humanity's evolutionary journey to a foreign planet, long beheld from a great distance. Binding these two poles is Avril, both a real human being and a symbolic entity. Her role in Jacob's life as a revelation serves to mimic mankind's fascination for Mars coming to fruition.The film reaches a critical point when Jacob can no longer play his instrument. Before the film can veer off into questions of virility or conjectures of symbolic impotence and old age, we are offered the opportunity to dig deeper and see that in his meeting Avril, he has found union. His muse stands before him, in the flesh. His old instruments are no longer necessary, for they have completed their task of speaking the Divine Feminine into being. Further, Jacob reveals a surprising confession – he's never had a sexual experience with a woman. All articulate arguments toward a man's sexual conquest manifesting via numerous, fetishizing musical sculptures can be neatly tossed aside as we are brought to a more spiritually significant motivation for Jacob. The abstract instruments become a metaphor to imply he was playing the sounds of his Anima all along, in tandem with his age. Now that he has met her in a profound way, his music shows to have been a process of refining this experience sonically, leading to his departure from the world of the concrete, and entering the realm of symbol. Jacob utters a well-worn line from human history, "I've waited for her my whole life," but here it has less of a cliché underpinning, due to the fact that the woman of whom he speaks is one who leads him to a beautiful nothingness. His life-long artistic pursuit was yearning for a place which, through Avril - his Anima - has finally become a substantial reality. Jacob is able to admit that he is, for the first time, living inside a story that was previously only notes in the air. As in Greek mythology when Amphion had built the walls of Thebes with the plucking of his lyre, Jacob has brought a hidden world to life with his music. However, in Jacob's case, his music did not build walls. It dissolved them, in a determined beckoning of the great abyss.

Yes, this is not a perfect movie, I didn't give 10 stars for achievement. I gave it for pure directing talent. You need to understand Quebec's movie industry. The mainstream movies here benefit heavily from financial government support. Mainstream movies here have average scenarios at best, and most of the time the acting is theatrical when it's not sub par. Even with some of the best paid actors here in the french province. Probably it's all under the influence of a group of people who don't really care about passion and quality.Not so with this particular picture. Compared with the rest of the local productions, this film is pure bliss. Actually, without being partisan, this picture reminds of one of the best Quebec's directors, Robert Lepage. He also has a role in the film. Actually, Lepage is a genius born at the wrong place where he doesn't receive the deserved recognition. Will Martin Villeneuve be luckier?

I think this film is exquisite and intelligent. Perhaps not made for the ordinary moviegoer and maybe a little bit too long, but certainly brilliant in its context and perfect visually. One must pay attention to detail to appreciate the depth of this artwork. Costumes, make up and hair did a magnificent job creating a "futuristic" look. What does the future hold? How will we dress, what will we drink, what will we do? The music and sound effects are magnificent, the visual effects are extraordinary. Futuristic Montreal is quite beautiful. Art department created a warmth that is perfectly in sync with the slow drawn out feeling of this new universe. If our future it is anything like this film where beauty and thought, where love and passion seem to be the principal motivators, I am looking forward to it. To appreciate the film, one must also listen carefully to the discourse about music, the universe and time and about love and beauty. I believe this film should be watched more than once.