Imitation

C

Directed by Federico Hidalgo

I wanted to like this movie for two very biased reasons, firstly because the director is a Concordia alum and secondly because the film was shot entirely in Montreal and its surrounding area. To my disappointment, however, "Imitation" is an extremely uneven work and suffers from unconvincing acting and a horribly clunky script, dooming it to the dustbin of mediocrity.

"Imitation" opens with a chance encounter between Fenton, a rather frail looking Montreal deadbeat youth, and Theresa, a Mexican woman in town to find her lost brother. Fenton, mesmerized by the Latin bombshell, offers his help in finding her lost sibling, even after she treats him rather badly and takes off with his car. The movie's plot revolves around Fenton and Theresa's continued search for Theresa's brother (who turns out to be her husband, but I'm hardly ruining the surprise, here...) as well as the romantic relationship that begins to grow between the two.

Although "Imitation" likely had good intentions, probably being originally designed as a sort of slow, meditative piece of urban cinema that touched on multiethnic relations in a multicultural city, the film is soo sloppily put together that any effort to enjoy the film is betean into submission by the shear clumsiness of the whole thing. The script, co-written by Hidalgo and Paulina Robles, is both thin and unbelievable and is delivered in a robotic, unnatural fashion by both Vanessa Bauche, who plays Theresa, and her counterpart Jesse Aaron Dwyre (who is the prime culprit here, to be fair to Bauche. When all is said and done, "Imitation" unfortunately comes off like a student film with a bigger than usual budget, which is too bad because the film does boast some stunning shots of Montreal which almost make the film worth watching for Montreal lovers such as myself. Ultimately, however, "Imitation" is much to flawed for me to even half heartedly recommend it to anyone.