Underground

A Canadian drama set in a mining community features an outstanding new actor to note.

Even now, some ninety years after it was made, G.W. Pabst’s early sound film Kameradschaft remains the definitive film drama built around a mining disaster. Undaunted, the Canadian writer/director Sophie Dupuis now follows in its footsteps with her second feature, Underground. The setting in rural Quebec comprises a community in which a local mine is central to its life. An impactful pre-credit sequence portrays the response to an explosion within the mine and, although the narrative proceeds with a long flashback covering events in the two months that have just passed, the last third of the film picks up and elaborates the drama of that opening scene.

In the circumstances - and prompted by the choice of title for the film - you could well assume that this was indeed, like Pabst’s masterpiece, a film about a mining disaster. However, the weakness of Underground is that, although it is certainly not without qualities, it does not cohere as a mining drama. To be sure, almost all of the main characters are miners, but much that happens in the first hour of the film is distinct from that. The central character here is Max (Joakim Robillard) but initially the story in which he is involved (one not without its own moment of strong drama) concerns the efforts by him and his girlfriend (the very engaging Lauren Hartley) to have a baby. It’s a theme that plays effectively but is then suddenly dropped. More persistent is another major plot thread: the relationship between Max and his best friend, the ex-miner Julien (Théodore Pellerin), the victim of a car crash that has left him incapacitated, slow in speech and likely to have a limited future.

Rather belatedly - perhaps too belatedly for the film’s good - we learn the details which explain why what has happened to Julien causes his father, Mario (James Hyndman) who is yet another miner, to show a deep hostility to Max. In many ways it is the relationship between Max and Julien which is the crux of the film and its importance is reasserted in the closing moments. But, with the last third of the movie mainly taking place in the mine, Julien inevitably disappears from the film for much of that time.

That the various aspects present in the plot do not fit together effectively is undoubtedly the film’s downside, but it is much stronger in other respects. Shot in French with subtitles, Dupuis convincingly portrays this rather macho community and directs with assurance. The players are admirably persuasive too and the lead roles are particularly well cast. Joakim Robillard as Max has the less showy role but always carries conviction and holds our interest. However, the actor who stands out is Théodore Pellerin and that’s not because Julien’s state carries its own sense of drama but because he blends an inner depth with a quality that can only be called magnetic. In Pellerin we unquestionably have an actor to watch.

Original title: Souterrain.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Joakim Robillard, Théodore Pellerin, James Hyndman, Jean-François Boudreau, Lauren Hartley, Jean L’Italien, Guillaume Cyr, Mickaël Gouin, Catherine Trudeau, Chantal Fontaine, Sébastien Leblanc.

Dir Sophie Dupuis, Pro Etienne Hansez, Screenplay Sophie Dupuis, Ph Matthieu Laverdière, Ed Michel Grou, Music Patrice Dubuc and Gaetan Gravel, Costumes Caroline Bodson.

Axia Films/Bravo Charlie/Bord Cadre Films/Sovereign Films-Sovereign Film Distribution.
97 mins. Canada. 2020. Rel: 20 August 2021. Cert. 15.