A beginner’s guide to Denis Villeneuve

Hugh Jackman –was it as scary to work with him in Prisoners as it looked? What the were all the spiders about in Enemy? And how the hell do you pronounce that last name?! There are many questions we’d love to ask Denis Villeneuve, the man who’s gone from abduction drama to existential horror to war-crime thriller to thought-provoking sci-fi - all in the space of the last three years. Sadly, he’s a little busy at the moment, so he wasn’t around to answer them. But, with his latest feature Arrival being released in the UK next week, we figured we had enough of a reason to nerd out over him and his work anyway. Here is a short profile of the man and his filmography; a three-time winner of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television Best Film award and Genie Award for Best Direction, future director of the sequel to the science fiction classic Blade Runner, and all-round great filmmaker.

Early Career

Born in Gentilly, Quebec, Villeneuve had been making short films for many years before rising to stardom. At the age of 23, he won La Course Europe-Asie 1990-91, a youth film competition hosted by Radio-Canada.

Maelström (2001)

The appearance of Maelström across various festivals worldwide in 2001, including the Toronto International Film Festival where it won Best Canadian Film, was when Villeneuve’s arthouse breakthrough occurred. An engrossingly dark and yet quirky comic tale, it follows the depressed alcoholic Bibiane struggle to keep things together, as a hit-and-run accident leaves her situation looking bleaker than ever. It delves deep into the meaning underneath the apparently glossy surface of the life she has come to lead, and won five Genie awards including Best Motion Picture. Oh - and it’s narrated by a fish that’s waiting to be chopped up for food. What’s not to like?

Polytechnique (2009)

Evidently Villeneuve was once not as prolific a filmmaker as he seems to be now. Made eight years after his breakthrough, with nothing between save for the short film Next Floor in 2008 (which won the Short Film Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival),it was nonetheless also very successful, winning nine Genie awards including Best Director and Best Motion Picture. A rather more controversial film than Maelström, it dramatises the events of the December 1989 “Montreal Massacre”, when a young man walked into the École Polytechnique in Montreal and shot 28 people, killing 14, and specifically targeted women. One critic said that though it seemed like a paradox to say so, Villeneuve had turned the events of that day into “a work of profound beauty”.

Incendies (2010)

Incendies was where Villeneuve’s career really kicked off. Garnering huge critical acclaim at both the Venice and Toronto film festivals, it went on to be selected to represent Canada in the Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film category, and was ultimately selected as one of the five nominees for the award. It follows a pair of twins who, after their mother’s death, learn from her will that they have a brother they did not know existed, and that their presumed-dead father is still alive. When they travel to an unnamed Middle-Eastern country to find their family and learn more about their mother’s past, a series of flashbacks begin to render their mother’s story more clearly. The binds of family and the horrors of the past weave together to form a breathtakingly complex and heartbreaking cinematic tapestry.

He has managed to turn the events of a school massacre into “a work of profound beauty”

Prisoners (2013)

With stars like Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano and Viola Davis on board, Villeneuve was finally swinging in the big leagues of Hollywood when the release of Prisoners rolled around. Thankfully he didn’t let the fame get to him, and this dense, dark slow-burning thriller is one of the most captivating works he’s put to the screen. Set in the damp, snow-slurried suburbs of Pennsylvania at thanksgiving, it follows Keller Dover (Jackman), his wife Grace (Maria Bello), and their friends Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Davis respectively) as their peaceful livelihoods are shattered by the disappearance of their children. When the active detective Loki (Gyllenhaal) finds a suspect (Dano), Keller decides to take matters into his own hands. It’s a film that works as a thriller, a mystery, a crime drama and a dual character study, perfectly capturing the unravelling of Keller and Loki as they hit dead end after dead end. Prisoners received critical acclaim in the USA and established Villeneuve as a talent to be watched closely.

Enemy (2013)

As if to counteract this newly established fame, Villeneuve released Enemy almost immediately after Prisoners. The film is a much shorter affair than its predecessor, but is more complex and less mainstream. When Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal, not only doubling up on Villeneuve films but here doubling up on lead roles as Adam and Anthony Claire) rents out a film on the recommendation of a colleague, he recognises an extra who looks eerily similar to him - looking him up, he finds that he is Anthony Claire, a man who appears to be his doppelgänger. The cataclysmic events that are set in motion when he sets out to find his mysterious likeness begin to tear apart the fabric of Adam and Anthony’s lives. The enigmatic but brilliatnly-used motif of spiders is one of the film’s most uniquely chilling aspects - and Villeneuve clearly wanted it to be kept that way, as part of the cast’s contractual agreements was that none of them were to disclose the meaning of the spiders to the public.

Sicario (2015)

The work that cemented Villeneuve’s status as the foremost craftsman of thought-provoking thrills working in Hollywood today can be found in Sicario, a war-crime-drama about the painful futility of an individual’s quest to do the right thing in the face of the machine of war. Emily Blunt stars as crack FBI agent Kate Macer, assigned to a mission by CIA officer Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) to apprehend a cartel operative. When Kate meets Matt’s mysterious partner Alejandro (Benicio del Toro) and a routine border-crossing pickup operation turns into one of the most intense traffic jams in cinema history, Kate begins to realise that this is much more than a simple arrest.