With Blade Runner 2049 fast approaching, ILT examines the ever-evolving, increasingly ambitious filmography of French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve…Follow ILT on twitter @iltfilm
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Polytechnique (2009)

Villeneuve cut his teeth as writer and director of French language features August 32nd on Earth (1998) and Maelström (2000), both of which received award recognition, before seeing out the following decade with a stark, monochrome depiction of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal.

Short and to the point, the hellish rampage of Marc Lépine (who goes unnamed in the film) against female students filters through to us from the tragic viewpoints of himself and two witnesses. Watching Villeneuve apply his eye for uncomfortable suspense to such a horrific real life event is a sobering and uniquely powerful experience. Inverting the tone to achieve such a response has always been one of Villeneuve’s specialities, and it is emphasised here by frequent switches between startlingly creative handheld sequences and some beautiful, yet haunting stationary shots.

Infused with sporadic, ultimately fleeting engagements with the victims, such an approach makes the chaotic event and its bleak, desolate consequences all the more impactful.

Incendies (2010)

Villeneuve’s farewell (for now) to his native language came in the form of Incendies, a creeping mystery of family relations set between Montreal and an undisclosed Middle Eastern nation, where the impact of a bloody civil war echoes through multiple generations.

The script took Villeneuve five years to complete, during which time he also wrote, shot and released Polytechnique. Adapting Wajdi Mouawad’s play of the same name, Villeneuve carefully crafts the sort of twist that can only be described as a no-holds barred punch to the gut, with the fist winding up and winding up for what seems an eternity alongside some terrific performances (led by Lubna Azabal) and a beautifully haunting soundtrack, before finally being unleashed to confirm the viewer’s worst fears.

Demonstrating the now firmly established, brutally tense style of its director, Incendies quickly became Villeneuve’s breakthrough to the big time, drawing the attention of a far wider audience than his previous flicks and earning him a thoroughly deserved Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

Prisoners (2013)

Following the international critical acclaim afforded to Incendies, Villeneuve exploded onto the Hollywood scene with Prisoners, a frantic, frightening portrayal of how easily the line separating ethical and unethical practices can become blurred during one’s pursuit of justice.

When two neighbourhood girls are abducted in small town America, Hugh Jackman’s increasingly unhinged father soon graduates from concerned parent to vengeance-seeker, while a local detective, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, attempts to piece together the puzzle before it is too late. Both men, particularly Gyllenhaal, turn in high calibre performances, but it is Villeneuve who really comes into his own behind the camera, unleashing a brutal two-and-a-half-hour thriller without wasting a single second.

Working for the first time with legendary British cinematographer Roger Deakins and wide-ranging Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, Prisoners gave Villeneuve the chance to convey his knack for cinematic misdirection, emotional battery and technical superiority to a whole new audience, and boy did he take his chance by the scruff of the neck.

Enemy (2013)

Shot immediately before Prisoners but released subsequently (hence the Canadian backdrop; Villeneuve’s last to date), Enemy once again sees Villeneuve working alongside Jake Gyllenhaal. And then again, as Gyllenhaal’s college history professor’s world becomes entangled in that of a small time actor, who just so happens to be his apparent doppelgänger.

A step up to outright mindfuck compared to Villeneuve’s other films, the strange manner in which he twists and merges events remains an intriguing guessing game throughout, as does the exploration of multiple themes left completely open to audience analysis and interpretation. Gyllenhaal excels as a character forced to look inward as a means of escaping from himself, all while the audience is kept on its toes by seemingly inexplicable symbolism that certainly does its job of making the skin crawl. Breathless in terms of both content and run length, Enemy is Villeneuve at this most psychologically chilling.

Sicario (2015)

Up until this point, Villeneuve’s pictures had consistently demonstrated his ability to leave audiences second guessing at every turn. With Sicario – penned by future Oscar winner Taylor Sheridan – he took things one step further by bringing new meaning to the concept of cinematic tension.

Reforming the holy trinity of technical masters alongside Roger Deakins and Jóhann Jóhannsson (both of whom were nominated for Academy Awards in their respective fields), Villeneuve drags us down into  the murky, unscrupulous underbelly of the United States’ war on drugs; a world Emily Blunt’s FBI agent struggles to comprehend when faced with the likes of Josh Brolin’s faceless agency and Benicio del Toro’s wronged assassin.

A pure assault on the senses that both looks and sounds incredible, Sicario sees Villeneuve successfully ratchet up the tension to the point where a collection of vehicles merely travelling from Point A to Point B with zero incidents stands out as one of the finest sequences in recent memory. If the dictionary’s definition of “edge of your seat” required a specific cinematic example, Sicario would be the logical nomination.

Arrival (2016)

Having barely given audiences a chance to draw breath in the wake of Sicario, Villeneuve was soon up and running again in what is now the most prolific period of his career to date. Switching his attention to sci-fi, a genre he had long had an interest in exploring, Villeneuve made the ballsy decision to produce an aliens-come-to-earth-what-do-they-want feature with minimal action and themes that run far deeper than your average blockbuster, from the basis of relationships and communication, to our place in space and time.

Born out of Ted Chiang’s short story, Story of Your Life, Arrival is an intriguing study of the bizarre spectrum that makes up human nature, spearheaded by a wonderful performance by Amy Adams and another spine-tingling score from Jóhann Jóhannsson. Villeneuve himself exercises subtle, organic direction, resulting in an understated, ultimately enjoyable picture that in a way sums up the low key nature of cinema during 2016. An ideal warm up for Blade Runner 2049.

This article originally appeared on SetTheTape.com