Robert Lepage (4)

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  Marie

  Pedro Pires  &  Robert Lepage 2014 25 min

  Adapted from excerpts of Robert Lepage's theatrical epic Lipsynch, this short drama profiles Marie, a jazz singer left with temporary aphasia following brain surgery. Memory gaps have robbed her of parts of her childhood, and she is particularly devastated by her inability to remember the voice of her father, who died when she was 12. Desperate, Marie searches through old home movies in an attempt to reconstruct the voice and words of the father she loved so deeply. Marie grasps at anything she can find to hear the sound of his forgotten voice, but it is only at the end of this process, and in the most unexpected of places, that she will finally hear its echo.
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  Triptych

  Pedro Pires  &  Robert Lepage 2013 1 h 34 min

  Triptych is a contemporary urban saga that tells the story of Michelle, a schizophrenic bookseller, her sister, Marie, a singer and actress, and Marie’s future husband, Thomas, a German neurosurgeon. Against a backdrop of written and visual poetry, the film depicts three pivotal moments in the lives of these characters while touching on an array of subjects—artistic expression, social engagement versus solitude, the many nuances of emotion. In this study of human communication in all its forms and complexity, these three lives intersect in their quests for personal identity and a burning desire for self-expression. Directed by Robert Lepage and Pedro Pires, this film adaptation of Lepage’s epic, nine-hour play Lipsynch captures the essence of the original work, which deals with the human voice.
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  Michelle

  Pedro Pires  &  Robert Lepage 2014 31 min

  In this short film, our protagonist Michelle suffers from schizophrenia and has just come out of a psychiatric institution. Finding refuge in the Quebec bookstore where she works, this tortured poet seems almost serene. But no one knows what she sees and hears when she lets her gaze drift. The ghosts, the self-inflicted wounds, the paranoia: they still weigh on her. When a student wanders into the bookstore, Michelle rediscovers her love of creating with words. Through this chance meeting of two completely different people, Michelle gradually finds her way out of the darkness.
  
  This short film is part of Triptych, a contemporary urban saga based on Robert Lepage's epic theatre piece Lipsynch.
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  Thomas

  Pedro Pires  &  Robert Lepage 2014 29 min

  This short fiction is part of Robert Lepage's three-piece cinematic work Triptych, itself an adaptation of Lepage's own epic nine-hour theatre play. Like his namesake in Caravaggio's iconic painting, Thomas is doubtful of everything: his marriage, his profession, and even the city where he lives. Marie, a jazz singer from Montreal, is devastated by the news that she must undergo brain surgery and finds herself desperately in search of comfort.
  

  Bathed in dreamlight, London is the half-fantasized, half-real backdrop for the improbable but fateful meeting of these two troubled souls. Beneath Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco and on the chilly docks of the Thames, the singer and the brain surgeon seek, find and then lose each other in this existential urban fable.