We live in a shrinking world. Boundaries are becoming more porous, commerce straddles the oceans, and communication is wide-reaching and constant. The movies have followed suit. There are hyperlink projects like Babel, of course, but international connections have also been explored on a more modest scale. Québec in particular has produced a mighty handful of films that embrace not only the nation’s multi-cultural character but also its global implications. Recent Oscar nominees Monsieur Lazhar and Incendies weave intercontinental stories with ease. Jean-Marc Vallée has added a new layer to this globally open trend with his new film, Café de Flore. Where other movies have simply been content to tell a single story that happens to span thousands of miles, Vallée has undertaken to make the interconnectedness of humanity itself his thematic focus. He reaches across both space and time, building bridges between the most impossibly distant of characters. He starts in modern-day Montreal. Antoine Godin, played by the newly cleaned and buffed Québecois rocker Kevin Parent, is leading a mostly perfect life. He is deeply in love with his girlfriend, the vivacious Rose (Evelyne Brochu). He has two beautiful daughters from his ex-wife, Carole (Hélène Floren), with whom he still has a strained but amicable relationship. An internationally successful DJ, he jets around the globe helping people lose their inhibitions. Yet as his relationship with Rose progresses, he is forced to confront the grounded parts of his life and the residual damage to his family left by the divorce.

The Dallas Buyer’s Club was at one time set to star Ryan Gosling. At another point there was word the project was going forward with Brad Pitt in the lead. I know what you’re probably asking yourself right now, “Who are those guys?” Doesn’t matter. Put those nobodies out of your head. The important information is that the upcoming biopic of Dallas electrician Ron Woodroof now has the good fortune of having the greatest living actor, Mathew McConaughey, leading it into the theaters. Back in it’s old incarnations Buyer’s Club was at one time going to be directed by Marc Forster, and another by Craig Gillespie. Now it will be helmed by The Young Victoria director Jean Marc Vallee. It was formerly going to be funded by Universal, but now it is proceeding as an independent. As McConaughey put it, “It’s not exactly the movie that studios are throwing money at these days.” Why is that? Probably because it is a dark, maybe controversial story about a man who contracted the AIDS virus in the late 80s and spent the rest of his life smuggling illegal alternative treatments into the US in an attempt to prolong not only his life, but the lives of other people who suffered from the disease. Due to his efforts Woodroof reportedly lived six years longer than his doctor’s diagnosis said he would, and he also managed to successfully prolong the lives of many others as well. The Dallas Buyer’s Club sounds like the Schindler’s List