From the moment 8-year-olds Maélya Boyd and Maïna-Rose Caméus took the stage at the Ottawa Art Gallery to introduce Rêver en néon, the new film in which they star, the two young girls had the full house charmed and transfixed.
Marie-Claire Marcotte’s directorial debut did not allow these sentiments to dissipate. The film — an adaptation of Marcotte’s own play, Flush, with greater emphasis placed on the child role played by Boyd — is a deceptively weighty story of a family healing from turmoil, seen through the eyes of a young girl.
When we meet Billie, she is being raised solely by her father and grandmother — it is evident that her mother is out of the picture, but the circumstances are not made clear. When she finds a photo of Canadian ballerina Karen Kain in the attic, her grandmother’s playful lie that it is her mother quickly becomes concerningly real in Billie’s imagination. Boyd’s leading performance is quite impressive for such a young performer. Marcotte allows just enough childlike chaos into the film, with certain scenes in which Boyd must have been instructed to simply run wild, and others in which she clearly relishes in the opportunity to tell off some grown-ups.
But she also shines in quieter moments, where she expresses Billie’s first experiences recognizing that these grown-ups have their own internal lives just like she does. Boyd’s inquisitive, searching face demonstrates a clear interiority as Billie tries to parse the conflicting stories she receives from adults at school and at home.
Billie’s friendship with her home-schooled neighbour Sherry, played by Caméus, provides some of the most purely entertaining scenes in the film. As Boyd explained in the post-screening Q&A while tightly clasping Caméus’s hand, the two girls became close friends during the shoot — this much is immediately apparent on the screen. Their smiles and laughs are infectious as the two run around in the snow, screaming out banter that sounds straight off of a school playground.
Corey Loranger and Genevieve Langlois also give very strong, understated performances as Billie’s father and grandmother. Both convincingly express the complicated, contradictory emotions inherent to their characters — the frustration and fatigue from the stresses of their situation paired with the deeply rooted love for Billie and for each other that keeps them going.
These great performances, coupled with tight writing and deeply nuanced characterization by Marcotte, elevate Rêver en néon from hyper-sentimental family drama to a mature exploration of this troubled dynamic that is stirring and ultimately heartwarming.
Simmering just beneath the surface, too, is a poignant examination of photographic representation. Billie develops a complete understanding of the “mother” she sees in a staged photograph in lieu of the real person — her relationship to the photograph is returned to near the end in a moving moment.
The film has a largely naturalistic look that is intermittently livened up with striking, expressive sequences that represent Billie’s colourful imagination and fantasies. Although the sparing use of these explosions of style makes them stand out quite effectively from the mundanity of the adult-world which we are mostly exposed to, these are the only parts of the film that really feel like a child’s experience of life.
Since the audience is very much in Billie’s shoes on a narrative level — not knowing the whole story about her mother — more of an effort to replicate Billie’s perspective stylistically would have helped to translate this feeling to a formal level as well.
Although its bare-bones leaves some room for improvement, Rêver en néon is a deeply affecting drama with tight, clever writing and gripping performances that demonstrates Marcotte’s keen eye for character.
Per IFFO’s routine of featuring Canadian short films in advance of screenings, Rêver en néon was preceded by the world premiere of the Ottawa-made short film Café des cauchemars.
Keeping with the night’s theme of exceptional young talent, the film was produced entirely by two graduating students from the Centre d’excellence artistique de l’Ontario (CEAO), Frida Symons-Swann and Nyah Clarke.
In addition to a brief introduction by the filmmakers, the screening featured a live performance of an original piece written for the film by fellow CEAO student Noa Nadon.
CEAO filmmakers and orchestra. Photo by Matthew Slevin.
Café des cauchemars runs less than five minutes, but Symons-Swann and Clarke pack in some impressive craft. Shooting on 16mm film — and doing some post-production work to make this stock look even rougher and grittier than it already is — the film establishes a silent movie aesthetic and dives straight into an expressive dream sequence. This features some remarkable costume and set design, beautifully composed black-and-white cinematography, and strikingly harsh lighting that creates deep, dark shadows.
Nadon’s music, written for a small ensemble of a little over 10 young musicians, compliments the film beautifully. In addition to the undeniable pleasure of hearing aN orchestra live, the piece interacts creatively with on-screen action and supports the established silent film atmosphere, harkening back to the days of early cinema where a film’s soundtrack would be performed right there in the theatre. In its tight runtime, Café des cauchemars demonstrates an impressively wide range of creative work by this group of remarkably talented youths.
The Ottawa Art Gallery screened Rêver en néon and Café des cauchemars on March 21, 2025 as part of the International Film Festival of Ottawa, which ended on March 23. Keep an eye out on their website for next year’s lineup.
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