It figures that a decent Canadian film, which lets face it, is a rare commodity, would me mishandled, neglected and not properly promoted, resulting in its exile into the inter zone of obscurity. Picture Claire is an original, stylish little crime thriller with two solid female leads and a story to tell, a story that has regretfully made its way to far too few audiences. Juliette Lewis plays Claire Beaucage, a confused and awkward French Canadian girl who finds herself in way over her head with dangerous, sexy jewel thief Lily Warden (Gina Gershon, in yet another physically demanding role that adds to my wish that she got a crack at playing Catwoman). Lily is on the run from Laramie (Callum Keith Rennie, the king of charisma) a mobster who wants something she stole, which through circumstance is now in the unwitting hands of Claire. The chase then starts, through the unmistakable streets of Toronto and from one violent encounter to the next. The film is a thriller, and a chase flick at heart, but in that heart it's got an almost old world, European flavour. Claire has quaint, almost Amelie esque inner monologues which give us insight into her character. She doesn't speak English, and everyone around her does, which somewhat alienates her. These interludes give us something to latch onto with this strange girl who is more in the dark about what's going on than even we are, watching from behind our screens. Watch for a profane cameo from Mickey Rourke as Gershon's lowlife partner in crime, a scene stealer as always. Thoroughly overlooked, and a true delight.

This is the story of a largely mute French Canadian whose trip to see a one night stand results in her getting mixed up with a smuggling operation gone wrong. The main character risks her life to avoid momentary embarrassment, gives a pep talk to a dog, wanders around the only city in Canada where no one apparently speaks French, has an intense hatred of having her picture taken and frequently fantasizes about being on the Moon.That sounds like the makings of a comedy, right? Unfortunately, Picture Claire is a drama that is all quirky and stylized and sucky.After her apartment is set on fire by a couple of thugs, Claire Beaucage (Juliette Lewis) decides to leave Montreal and ride the bus all night to Toronto. There she hopes to hook up again with Billy Stuart (Kelly Harms), a young photographer she picked up in a Montreal bar one night. Before that happens, Claire winds up in a diner bathroom as smuggler Lily Warden (Gina Gershon) meets an accomplice in the dining area and kills him. Though she doesn't know it, Claire is blamed for the murder and then finds out Billy has a live-in girlfriend. In an amazingly stupid move, Claire ends up swinging from Billy's balcony into the apartment below…which just happens to be where Lily lives. She grabs Lily's purse and flees, unknowingly taking with her the thing Lily was smuggling. As Lily takes off after Claire, two more of Lily's accomplices take off after her and two flatfooted detectives also join in the search for Claire. A lot of lame going hither and yon ensues, resulting in an ending that goes from marginally clever to hugely idiotic in about 15 seconds.The best thing about Picture Claire is the performance of Callum Keith Rennie as one of Lily's accomplices. He plays the character with the flair of a theatrical killer and ends up exactly the way theatrical killers would in the real world.Other than that…ugh. Characters repeatedly have to do incredibly dumb things to get the story from one point to another. For all her carefully established traits, Claire is basically a non-entity played pretty much that way by Juliette Lewis. The script tries to compensate for that by giving the other characters more to do and say, but it never bothers to give the audience any reason to care about any of it. Director Bruce McDonald is also incessantly breaking up the screen into smaller boxes with different images in them. It's a mildly engaging visual technique that gets very old, very fast when it becomes clear that McDonald is only doing it because he thinks it looks cool.Picture Claire isn't an aggressively atrocious motion picture. It's just one of those lame indy flicks that aren't nearly as hip and cool as they think they are. If you've never seen those kind of movies, you might find this one just barely worth your time. However, there are a lot better films out there for you to watch.

Picture Claire is a good movie, with a good storyline and good acting. But when it didn't go into theatres and Bruce MacDonald himself thought poorly upon it, I had to wonder what was wrong with it. (And I wasn't the only one.) I bought it the first moment I saw it in stores. Basically much of the movie's elements aren't up to Bruce MacDonald's standards. Everything he uses to make a good story- the foreshadowing, the slight hinting toward something, the full circle- wasn't as clear in the movie as it was in others as say Hard Core Logo and Dance Me Outside. Some of the things should have been made clearer, such as the reference to the islands, the misogyny of certain characters and their expectations of Claire. The denument itself seemed to fall apart on him. It ended in quite a mess, but the very ending itself, the closing credits, I liked. So the movie has flaws. Most movies do. And it's not up to MacDonald's standards. Does that mean his fans won't enjoy it. No, his fans will still enjoy it. People who aren't fans will still enjoy it. Though somehow it should have been done better it would still have been worth seeing in theatres.

Bruce McDonald completely changes his filmmaking style with this film. It's more polished and probably attracts pop culture more. Bruce was probably infulenced by the director of Run Lola Run, with all the running and the techno music. All in all, an amazing film from a filmmaker that is expanding on his genre. Fabulous performances by Lewis, Gershon, Rennie and Rourke.