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Simply A Masterpiece

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This mercifully short art film is yet another example of a technique introduced in Quebec cinema by Gilles Groulx in his 1964 "The End of Summer/Le temps perdu" short which, for better or for worse, has propagated the use of the indefinitely sustained camera angle /sequence testing the limits of the viewer's endurance that is a hallmark of so many nice, little independent productions making the art circuit.The film starts as an apparent documentary about a 69-year old man living alone in an isolated and sprawling rural junkyard that ensures his survival as a reseller of used car parts and antiques (hence the title). The man tells the camera and various visitors and customers about his strange lifestyle, his diversions, his good health, his love for his work, his girlfriends and his philosophy of life, saying "I don't care if people think I'm crazy, they can't live my life".One day when the man is away on an errand, a group of four nomadic teenagers with Down's syndrome invade his domain and go through his belongings mostly looking for food. There are three boys and one girl. One boy seems to be the lover of the girl. One boy is carried around in a shopping cart, apparently because of a wound on his lower left leg which has been awkwardly bandaged with what appears to be a shower curtain. The third boy likes to play with a presumably unloaded rifle and make believe that he drives a derelict truck.The owner is aware of and tolerates the presence of the intruders and carries on working as usual in full view of his transient visitors although no words are exchanged. Later, the wounded boy, left alone, reaches for a water bottle and dies. His companions proceed to bury him in the yard. The owner joins them and helps with their task. Shortly afterwards, the survivors leave the yard and shake hands with the owner who is left to ponder what happened.This film is on the surface a reflection on time, life, death and the sad fact of our mortality. Its value is in the mood and emotions it inspires.As the English subtitles of this French-language film are burned into the DVD image, I was sorely tempted to watch it in double or octuple speed but was forced to backtrack in order to catch some of the subtleties of the central event and its effect on the yard's owner.The film affected me in part because of the closeness I feel for the colloquial Quebec language and the woodland landscape depicted and in part because of its simple unvarnished humanity.