Le Tour De Canada

Bluesky

The interlinguistic tensions at the heart of the Canadian experience are explored at speed in John Hollands’ pulsing and irreverent short. Screened as part of Fantasia 2025, this feisty little film captures a bicycle race between St John’s and Vancouver in a wild melange of styles. There are multiple competitors but only two matter, with the rivalry between the Francophone and the Anglophone expressed through an exchange of glances, summary subtitles and sometimes shocking manoeuvres.

It’s framed through the television viewing of a shopkeeper halfway along the route, whose surroundings are lovingly detailed and full of character despite the brevity of our interactions with him. Narration comes from The Twentieth Century director Matthew Rankin, who briefly explains the history of the competition before a crudely animated official shoots a moose in the head and the racers are off. Elliot Farinaro’s brilliant editing knits together animated and live action scenes with archive footage, sometimes all in the same shot. Great use is made of rear projection and in places footage is playfully flipped, perhaps in a nod to the errors that frequently appear in serious sports documentaries.

Very full on, the film finds a certain eroticism in the rivalry it depicts, only increasing the probability that there will be blood before the race is done. As the cyclists cross Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba, passing through their best-known cities, humour emerges from unabashed stereotyping, and a scene where everybody grinds to a halt in traffic will be relatable the world over. This is a six minute tour of what it means to be a white Canadian, and as such it’s fitting that it should fizzle out a little awkwardly at the end. En route, it is continually inventive, thrillingly paced and a lot of fun to watch.

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