This part of Cousineau and Ivalu's film, with faces and landscapes communicating just as much as the native tongue, is lovely and fascinating. But not too long into the film's 93-minutes, the filmmakers introduce a narrative construct involving a grandmother (co-director and co-writer Ivalu) heading to another island to dry fish and meat with her grandson, played by Ivalu's real-life grandson Paul-Dylan, and her dying friend (Mary Qulitalik). They go and, on her death bed, the friend asks grandmother to relate yet another animal-themed fairytale to her adopted son when they return.
But rather than telling tales of dreams involving birthing bear cubs and the grandson's first seal hunt, they find their entire tribe dead, infected by some disease in the needles given to them by the 'others' (A.K.A. white men). Grandmother and grandson head off into the wilderness and face the elements, which include a looming thunderstorm, hunger and a wolf attack. Their only hope: An illusory tribe grandmother talks about where fish and caribou are plentiful and the children are healthy and help the elders; a place where everything is good and nothing hurts. Not so surprisingly, the contrary is in store for grandmother and grandson.
The third and by far the weakest installment of a trilogy that includes 2001's magnificent The Fast Runner and the undistributed, gorgeous Journals of Knud Rasmussen, Before Tomorrow is as unsuccessful at finding its pace and aim as its characters are at finding a break. Even the bucolic landscape shots, courtesy of cinematographers Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn, begin to stale by the film's midway point.
The forced plotting doesn't help much, either. When grandmother opens a tent to find her family covered in boils and lesions, the sight shocks us not just because it's horrific, but also because it is so obviously the most inauthentic emotional ploy the film can offer. Unlike, say, the acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke, neither Ivalu nor Cousineau have the light, deft touch it takes to merge cultural fiction and social realism in a seamless manner. This is only one reason why Before Tomorrow, despite being the shortest of Ivalu's trilogy, feels as long and hopeless as a formidable winter.
Aka Le jour avant le lendemain.
