“5150 Elm’s Way” (2010)
5150 Elm’s Way (or,5150 rue des Ormes, the original French title and how you would find it on Blu-ray) is on one hand, a relatively simple setup; a young man witnesses something he shouldn’t have and spends the rest of the film fighting against the consequences of this unintentional action. Think Witness meets Blow Out meets The Man Who Knew Too Much, except different (and this is where the other hand comes in), very different!
Poor, young Yannick (not destitute, but unfortunate) is just out trying to do his homework, capturing video for his first assignment from film school, when he wipes out on his bike, damaging it beyond immediate repair. We’ve all done it, a bruise here, a scrape there, no big deal. Yannick (Marc-André Grondin), in his new, perfectly friendly looking, suburban neighborhood in Quebec, spots a cab in the driveway of a normal, family home and knocks on the door, hoping for a quick ride home.
Jacques (Normand D’Amour), the man who answers the door, who looks like a typical father of two, wants to help this young man out. He isn’t on duty and is a bit busy, but offers to call a cab for him. During this phone call, Yannick enters the home, seeking a towel to tend to his bleeding limb. In his meandering around, his attention is drawn to the screaming and pounding coming from upstairs. When he wanders into a room he probably shouldn’t have, what he sees is vicious, unexpected and lands him in the doghouse. Unfortunately this doghouse is a locked and boarded up room that Jacques feels forced to keep him in, as what he’s seen would certainly be frowned upon.
At this point in the film, we think we have a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen, or at least a general direction. Well, we would most likely be very wrong. Actually, this is where shit starts to get very original, very specific and very, very strange. Much of this resides in the family dynamic between Jacques, his wife and two daughters, all of them complicit in his ‘obsession’. The rest of it lies in Jacques’s own obsession with chess. He is a renowned, award winning and an unbeaten master, and how this factors in to the film I shall not reveal.
Jacques’s wife, Maude (Sonia Vachon), is devoutly religious like her husband, unquestioning, but also quietly conflicted. His older daughter, Michelle (Mylène St-Sauveur), is the family protégé and maybe a bit too zealous. The younger daughter, Anne (Élodie Larivière), is mute and unreadable. Every member of this family plays a vital role in the gruesome and horrific outcome of this film. The family drama reminds me, in the best way possible, of the 2013 film, We Are What We Are (the US remake, and yes, the superior version) and also the book, Brother, by Ania Ahlborn.
The performances across the board are uniformly phenomenal, but Grondinand and D’Amour are the standouts, as the heart of the film lies in the bizarre relationship between Yannick and Jacques, following the trial and tribulations each man goes through. Both men, on opposite sides of the door, are on a slow descent into madness, seemingly with no end in sight and their journey is the film.
Patrick Senécal, who adapted his own novel, brings a fresh, challenging and thought-provoking twist to a familiar tale, and director, Éric Tessier, not only creates great tension throughout, but brings a visual flourish in some very unexpected places that works wonders. 5150 Elm’s Way is a bright and welcome entry to a familiar suspense/horror trope that is well worth the purchase.
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