ALL THE DAYS BEFORE TOMORROW: An Interview with writer/director, Francois Dompierre

It couldn’t happen any other time than the middle of the night. That ringing is not a dream. There, on the other side of the line, is the voice you have tried so hard to forget while secretly longing to hear again. You’re half asleep so you can’t be sure the conversation is actually happening. She’s in town. She’s leaving tomorrow. She wants to see you. Nothing good can come of this but you can’t say no., not to her. So you drag yourself out of bed, throw on some jeans and prepare yourself to revisit every memory, good and bad, that the two of you created. It’s a scenario most can relate to and that common experience is what makes Francois Dompierre’s ALL THE DAYS BEFORE TOMORROW, a dissected history of Wes (Joey Kern), Alison (Alexandra Holden) and the space they created together, easy to connect with and even easier to fall in love with.

Dompierre called Montreal his home for many a year before he moved to Los Angeles to complete his graduate studies in film. For the first little while, he struggled to find confidence in himself and his ability to make a meaningful contribution to the overcrowded world of film. His belief in himself eventually grew out of the friendships he made with his fellow film students and consistently working on films. Once the craft began to work its way into his nature, he penned his first feature, which is loosely based on a woman he once knew. Having a wide group of talented individuals to choose his crew from (including cinematographer, Gavin Kelly, who shot the Academy Award winning short, WEST BANK STORY), Dompierre set out across Utah, California and Montreal to put all those years of training to test. Thus far, his labor has been rewarding as the film has been screened at numerous festivals throughout the United States and most recently, it has come home to Montreal at the World Film Festival, where it is competing in the First Feature category.

While it may have first stemmed from the need to heal himself, the script for ALL THE DAYS BEFORE TOMORROW grew into an insightful examination of the differences between the sexes and more specifically between these two people. At times they infuriate each other while at others, they show each other a potential they didn’t know was possible. At all times though, they fascinate the viewer’s mind while their brilliant surroundings engage the senses. After seeing the film, I suddenly felt nervous to meet Dompierre. How could I interview him without gushing the entire time about the subtleties and simple insights that worked themselves into my soul within the film’s first minutes? We ended up having a very real conversation that ended, much to my surprise, with an embrace instead of a handshake. I guess I must have still gushed a little.


Joseph Belanger: If I can be honest, I was concerned the film might not come together the way I felt it could after seeing the trailer but really, your film truly surprised me from beginning to end. Congratulations.

Francois Dompierre: Thank you.

JB: It was my pleasure really. There’s a point early on in the film where the characters come home to Montreal. I didn’t see that coming and it warmed my sensitive Montrealer heart to have seen that. So after so many festival screenings in the United States, how does it feel to bring this movie home?

FD: It’s a huge deal. I haven’t been nervous like this is such a long time. We’ve been showing the film for six months and you can give me a crowd of a thousand and I don’t care because I don’t know anyone there. Here in Montreal though, I was stressed. I had all my friends and my family coming to see it. Strangely enough, their opinions really matter to me. I was actually curious to see if it would be received well in the Montreal culture. I was worried they would think it was too American or commercial, which I don’t think it is. Are they going to think it’s cheesy because of the romantic elements? But it ended up working so well; everybody loved it.

JB: With the film being so well loved, how is that you don’t have wider distribution for it?

FD: We’re a little under the radar. Making a film is one thing but finding out about the politics of distribution … Wow, that I was not prepared for. I was prepared to make a film, technically and artistically, and I put all my heart and hard work into it. I naively felt that if the film were good then somehow, it would surface. That could still happen in the long term.

JB: How long do you think you’re going to have to wait though? When watching the film, I feel a sense of pride as a Montrealer to see what good can come out of this city. The script is great; it looks great; the acting is great but there’s something about it that gives me pause as to whether it has the potential to play well in wide distribution. Then again, why wouldn’t it?

FD: It’s a hard thing to figure out. It’s not even that distributors don’t like it; they’re just not seeing it. Some of the bigger festivals have turned us down but those selection committees never even watched it. The interns get over 100 DVD’s a week that they have to go through and pick five from those. Toronto turned us down which is a shame because they should be proud but our last big hope is Berlin and Telefilm is helping us there. I know that if I can get a selection committee into a theatre to see a print, I think I could get in. I feel like the first fifteen minutes of my film still have some issues so if you’re watching that many DVD’s in a week, you might turn it off right away because you think it might be good but there is surely better. But if I can just get people in a room where they can’t leave, y’know. And this is what might happen in Berlin. If we get into Berlin, we might as well have played in Toronto because our chances of getting picked up are just as good there. It’s just frustrating because now that it’s been made, I just really want people to see it. Then again, a lot of directors have troubles with their first films and still go on to promising careers.


JB: Speaking of other directors, and I hate to be so plain, but as I drew many comparisons to other directors while watching the movie, I wanted to know who your influences were.

FD: One film I really like is LOST IN TRANSLATION. I actually wrote this film before seeing it and then you see this girl in Tokyo and the similarities really freaked me out. Oh great, I’m ruined. I almost changed it to Hong Kong but I decided not to. I really liked CRASH, which came out around the same time we were making this film. And even then I thought that people would think that I was stealing the snow scene from CRASH. I ended up meeting Paul Haggis and I told him people would think I was stealing the snow scene from his movie. He told me not to worry because a lot of people told him that they thought he was ripping off the frog scene in Magnolia. And that film actually had a huge influence on me too. I like Wong Kar-Wai, Woody Allen, Alejandro Inarritu.

JB: I actually saw some Woody Allen in your film. You framed Montreal much in the same way Allen does New York in Manhattan, like postcards.

FD: And Manhattan is my favorite film of his. That is such an amazing compliment. BABEL, TRAFFIC, Michel GondryTHE SCIENCE OF SLEEP or ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, all these films have such a human component to them, always so much emotion, all gorgeous visually. They’re all like hyper-real, that much prettier, that much more dramatic.

JB: So these are the people that have inspired your style and filmic approach, now what was the inspiration for All the Days Before Tomorrow?

FD: It’s loosely based on someone I met. I’ll be very honest, I wrote it at first just to get it out of my system, deal with that person literally. I was in love; it wasn’t working out. I was really bummed for a whole year. So I decided to be a full cliché and just write about it to get it out of my system. It could have been really bad but it was very therapeutic. Then, very quickly as I was writing it, it became something else. It’s very different from what happened between us but that was the fuel.

JB: It’s very relatable.

FD: See, this is a surprise. I always thought I was writing this really specific film and obviously it is really specific to me and what was going on in my head. I never really thought that people were going to be able to relate to it. I wrote it thinking that if people like it, great, and if they don’t, well too bad. As it turns out though, so many people relate to so many different aspects of it. After the screenings, people come to talk to me or send me e-mails afterward. It’s loaded.


JB: And subtle. 30 seconds after Alison enters Wes’s apartment, she is picking things off of his sweater. How much of these kinds of details come from your direction or your script and how much of this comes from the actors’ performances?

FD: A lot of the details were very specific to the script but obviously they’re really good actors. I do a lot of takes. I knew I had no film if the acting was not superb just like I knew that I had no film if the dialog was flat. We designed everything regarding shooting this film around getting good performances. Every day, I’d show up and take half an hour with the actors. We would take all the direction out of the script and just leave the set-up and the dialogue and have them run it to see where it would go without thinking too much. They brought a lot and we fought on a lot of things. I’m an unproven director and even if I was proven, I’d still have to get really involved. By far, the hardest thing to get in this film were the performances but they really did a great job.

JB: Indeed they did. In fact they did so great a job that you really get to know these characters when watching. They’re quirky, endearing and very real. After spending so much time with them during the production process, do you miss them now?

FD (laughing): I’m really happy you asked that. Yes, I do miss them. Even though I’ve seen the film like 300 times, I still get wrapped up in these people. It’s a strange process, to take what’s in your head and then somehow put it out there and still want more. I do wish I could be with these people again.

JB: Me too and I’ve only seen it once so far.

BLACK SHEEP @ THE 31ST MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL


What a difference a year makes. Last year, I casually fit five films from the Montreal World Film Festival into my schedule. I met up with friends, had lunches before and drinks afterward. For ten days, there was something special happening in my routine. This year, the special dropped off and pressure took its place. I was asked by Ioncinema, a website I’ve been writing DVD reviews for these last couple of years, to cover the festival for the site. This meant I would be fully accredited and that in turn means I get a fancy badge with my picture on it that allows me into all the screenings and gives me access to the pressroom. A schedule was made. I would attend twelve screenings. Meanwhile, I still had to go to work every day, work on the Black Sheep site upgrades and find time for an editing project I have pending. Somehow managing to make everything work was the least of my worries (cutting the gym out of my schedule freed up time for meals). My biggest concern was booking interviews with directors who were in town with their films. I finished with three interviews, two less than I had hoped for but I am very happy with the results of all three. As many of the screenings I scheduled were done so in hopes an interview would follow, I cancelled many of them to alleviate some of the aforementioned pressure. Twelve screenings turned into five … well, five and a half really because I walked out of Nicolas Roeg’s PUFFBALL (blech). Subsequently, the pressure that was initially created entirely by myself gave way to other states, like appreciation and enjoyment.


The first film I saw is actually in competition in the First Films category. Germany’s DER ANDERE JUNGE (THE OTHER BOY), directed by Volker Einrauch, tells the tale of two teenage boys in Hamburg who are forced to interact with each other because their parents are good friends when they otherwise never would. Paul (Tim Oliver Schultz) is a boy with no boundaries. He does what he wants and his parents do nothing to discipline him. Why should they really? He is a man after all and a man needs to find his own path if he is ever going to be successful. Robert (Willi Gerk) on the other hand is quiet and pensive. He is a sensitive boy who is mostly left alone by his parents, as they don’t really know what to do with him. Robert allows Paul to step all over him whenever the two cross paths, losing a little more esteem each time. By the time Paul naively sticks a gun in Robert’s face, he cannot take it anymore. Having finally been pushed too far, Robert pushes back. One of the boys ends up dead and the true beauty of the film follows. Perhaps if the parents weren’t so preoccupied playing cards with each other, they could have seen what was going on between their boys in the next room this whole time. The death and subsequent cover-up forces all involved to wake up and see the limitations of their own lives. Einrauch’s film asks many questions about nature and nurture, like whether the boys are accountable for their own actions or just acting out the influences of their parents, but never presumes to answer any of the questions directly. Instead, he allows the film’s starkly guarded performances and delicate script to leave the debate in the laps of the viewer to bring home to bed with them. Sleep is that much further out of reach after seeing this one.


For me, sleep was even further away on that particular night. New this year at the festival is the Midnight Slam series. Gore and ghouls from around the globe found themselves a home in the daily midnight screenings dedicated to violence and horror. Making its North American premiere at the festival was SHOOT ‘EM UP, one of the larger festival entries this year as the film is being released ultra-wide this week. Midnight screenings are like one long stretch of full moon fever. People seem to feel that the time of day gives them free reign to holler and give props every time someone jabs a half-eaten carrot through the back of someone’s skull. I don’t mean to take away from the fun, especially from a film like SHOOT ‘EM UP, which can be loads of fun. I guess I just felt bad for my roommate who had to sit next to “Oh, no. Oh, no. He’s not going to … OH YEAH! HE DID GO THERE!! I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS MOVIE!!!” all the way through the movie. As irritating as this was to my roommate, it is probably exactly what writer/director, Michael Davis wants. This is Davis’s first Hollywood production and he surprisingly scored some top talent (Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Monica Bellucci) for what amounts to nothing more than B-movie with better production value and smarter dialogue. Drawing inspiration from John Woo’s HARDBOILED, Davis gives us a man (Owen) who delivers and then saves a baby amidst constant gunfire zipping past his head. With the baby tucked under his arm like a football, he outruns the bad guy (Giamatti), finds solace in the arms of a lactating prostitute (Bellucci) and eventually finds himself jumping out of an airplane and into a shoot-out in mid-air. Davis’s action sequences are outrageous but are also sharply choreographed and shot with style. His witty screenplay even manages to weave family values into the fold. SHOOT ‘EM UP is the kind of movie you shut your brain off to enjoy, only to realize you didn’t have to.


An opposite experience can also be had. SPINNING INTO BUTTER is the kind of movie you keep your brain alert for only to realize you could have left it in the car. I am honestly baffled at how this film finds itself in competition for the festival’s top prize. I have been known to write films off prematurely but I knew within the first minutes of this film that it would be hollow and cheap. SPINNING INTO BUTTER was originally a play and having the playwright (Rebecca Gilman) also write the screenplay (with Doug Atchison) was the first mistake to be made. The story of an over glorified guidance councilor (Sarah Jessica Parker) who moves from an inner city Chicago school to a quieter Burlington university (read as leaves black for white) is preachy without a strong position. It knows what it wants to say but it doesn’t know how to say it. It wants to expose the deep seeded hatred and racism within everyone that we don’t talk about. This is both admirable and brave. It’s a shame it tells us this through one-liners angrily spat out of numerous throwaway characters of various ethnic backgrounds. You’ve got an angry black woman, a noble Nuyorican guy and a nerdy Asian student for starters. The colorful background makes way for the nice white lady dean of students (Parker) to meet and engage in challenging debate with the well-intentioned black reporter (Mykelti Williamson). While the film finds its most solid moments in scenes shared between these two actors, its ultimate lack of character encouraged by first-time film director, Mark Brokaw, only turns this movie against itself. Instead of exposing our buried racial prejudices, it serves to show the tokenism and ignorance of the filmmaker himself as it relies on stereotypes to make its points.


My journey then went from no character to full character. After making the rounds through the United States festival circuit, Montreal filmmaker, Francois Dompierre, comes home with his first feature, ALL THE DAYS BEFORE TOMORROW. This was it for me. It is a strikingly beautiful, rich character study that is haunting and inspiring. You know after the first few minutes that you are about to see something meaningful and significant. Then, by the time the film comes to a close, you know that Dompierre has the potential for great things in his future. Wes (Joey Kern) gets a phone call late one night from Alison (Alexandra Holden). He wishes he were still dreaming but he can’t avoid the voice on the other line. A part of him doesn’t want to either. From the few things said over the phone, so much is learnt about these two people and the effects they have had on each other’s lives. Meanwhile, the depth of Dompierre’s screenplay has only just begun. Each scene that follows gives that much more insight into the nature of their relationship and themselves without revealing too much. The intrigue nears Lynchian proportions as the film is told out of chronological order but in a manner that feels like the only way it could have been told. I found myself anxious as the film was drawing to a close as I felt I didn’t know enough yet about these two people, about their fascinating story. Dompierre did not disappoint though. He reveals just enough and at just the right times to keep you wanting to learn more about Wes and Alison and subsequently doing so until the end of the film. The film is not without its faults but they smooth themselves out through the earnestness of the director’s presence felt throughout the film. My only regret about ALL THE DAYS BEFORE TOMORROW is that I didn’t see it at a public screening so I could have shared in the warmth this film gives so freely.


Like last year, my closing film for the festival is also the closing film of the festival itself. Unlike last year, the film is well deserving of its place. French director, Claude Miller, returns to the Montreal World Film Festival this year with UN SECRET (A SECRET), starring Patrick Bruel, Cecile de France and Julie Depardieu. The sheer scope of the story is staggering. The summer of 1955 is vibrant and colorful. Everyone around the swimming pool is alive and soaking in the gorgeous day. Everyone, that is, except for young Francois. He is in awe of his mother’s beautiful stature, weary of his father’s disappointment and afraid to get in the water. Thirty years later, Francois (Mathieu Almarich) is a therapist who helps others face their fears. It isn’t clear whether his fears have been entirely vanquished but it is certain his healing process began in 1962, when he finally learned about his family’s secret. The secret itself had been buried since the early 1940’s. The script begins by alluding to things unsaid within Francois’s family and how avoiding saying these things only creates more damaging problems than speaking the truth would. However, the title itself suggests that there is one secret that will eclipse all. As that secret unfolds, the viewer is treated to so much suffering that serves as concrete insight into how this family became what they did. Miller’s film is a morality tale about the consequences of keeping things to yourself. Not saying what you should only leads to internalized torture that stops you from being who you are. Furthermore, it is foolish to think that secrets don’t get out. Silence echoes louder than any truth ever could. That said, as much as I would like to, I can’t tell you anymore about this film … it’s a secret and I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you.

On this, the last day of the 31st Montreal World Film Festival, I am relieved that it is closing and to have survived. Beyond that though, I am thrilled for having had the experience behind the scenes. Hanging out at the Hyatt lobby, meeting directors, getting into sold out screenings – all these things are new to me and it was a pleasure to have had these opportunities. I’d like to thank Trevor, Phil and Candice for joining me for screenings. I’d like to thank Celine France and Maryanne Shelley at the Festival pressroom for being so accommodating and helpful. I’d like to thank directors Michael Davis, Volker Einrauch and Francois Dompierre for meeting with me and sharing their experiences. And lastly, I’d like to thank Eric Lavallee at Ioncinema for sponsoring me to begin with and making this whole thing possible.

Next week, I will make my way to Toronto for my first time at the Toronto International Film Festival. See you there.