Since his girlfriend left him for his best friend, Léo (Pier-Luc Funk) has withdrawn into himself, swapping his job as a cook in the family pizzeria for that of a night deliveryman; a way for him to avoid social interactions and wallow in his reassuring solitude.
Attracted by this lonely posture, John (François Papineau), a mysterious taxi driver, who quickly reveals himself to be extraterrestrial, begins to track down Léo, charged by his boss (Micheline Lanctôt) with making humans disappear, whose absence, due to lack of connections , will not be particularly noticed. However, John’s plans are quickly muddled by a budding romance between the young man and the beautiful Rita (Marianne Fortier), a travel agent who seems to understand him better than anyone before.
Directors Marie-Hélène Viens and Philippe Lupien took on a major challenge with their first feature film, You are not alonewhich is intended first and foremost to be a philosophical and formal reflection on solitude, both on an intergalactic and individual scale.
To illustrate this ingenious allegory, the two filmmakers choose to mix genres, accentuating the contrasts between romance and science fiction, while attempting to maintain their guiding thread. Thus, the two parts of the story constantly respond to each other, the supernatural reflecting very explicitly the inner questions that the beginnings of love give rise to.
This oscillation between genres is particularly successful on a formal level while Marie-Hélène Viens and Philippe Lupien demonstrate their great cinematographic erudition, enriching their story with references to classics of the caliber of Punch-Drunk Love, Encounter of the Third Kind, Signs or 2001: A Space Odyssey. These impromptu references are for the most part tasty and full of humor, like a scenario sprinkled with anachronistic, but well-balanced, nods to popular culture – special mention to the duo’s love for Roch Voisine .
Faced with the contagious enthusiasm of the two accomplices, who multiply the intense traveling shots and the supernatural shots and take advantage of the nocturnal and autumnal atmosphere in which their story takes place, it is difficult not to have a minimum of cinematic pleasure.
This clever mix, however, loses its effectiveness on a narrative level. The changes of register at times harm the coherence and the viewer’s feeling of immersion, which leaves the different arcs with a taste of unfinished and unevenness.
As shy and clumsy young lovers, Pier-Luc Funk and Marianne Fortier nevertheless deliver an impeccable performance, bringing out a complicity that is as natural as it is touching, into which everyone can project themselves. This endearing naturalness offers a destabilizing contrast with the theatrical and dehumanized performance of François Papineau, to which it is much more difficult to adhere, despite its extraterrestrial dimension.
