Cauchemar conseil

A struggling PhD student finds liberation through a new friendship with a free-spirited musician, in this delightful philosophical comedy. Playful in both form and content, Cauchemar Conseil is a charming celebration of female allyship, creative connection and everyday wonder, set across a magical Montreal summer.

Lucie (Marie Ève Loyez), a French PhD student living in Montreal, is in crisis. Broke, visa-less, and wrestling with an unruly thesis and a calamitous love life – torn between a dead-end affair with her thesis advisor and the unwanted attentions of her unemployed, Dostoevsky-obsessed ex – it’s no wonder she’s struggling to sleep. Ravaged by insomnia, somnambulism and vivid nightmares, Lucie begins to visit a woodland park on the edge of the city, where a reclusive shaman offers unconventional therapies to soothe her racing mind. There she meets the radiant and spontaneous Béatrice (Geneviève Ackerman), whose instinctive joie de vivre and liberating friendship opens up new, less anxious ways of living.

Set across a languid Montreal summer, Cauchemar Conseil is a delightfully offbeat intellectual buddy movie. This second feature from Ana Tapia Rousiouk and Renaud Després-Larose, whose Le rêve et la radio screened at IFFR 2022 in the Tiger Competition, was devised in close collaboration with the lead actors. The result is a freewheeling, highly original cinematic adventure infused with an irresistible, improvisational energy.

– Rachel Pronger

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