L’Amour tells the story of Stephen Marshall. He’s a Nova Scotian who did things that a) would spoil this film and b) are easily Google-able anyway. As much as I’m not the biggest fan of the Nova Scotia aesthetic, I kind of want to see a version of this story under that lens. Nonetheless, Marc Bisaillon’s film smooths out those edges. He also does interestingly visual things about the different timelines. One moment, we see a school through overcast lighting, and within seconds, the sun shines, taking us back a decade. And instead of English Stephen, we get French Alex (Pierre-Luc Lafontaine).

Alex pretends everything is all right which of course, they are not. The film takes us through Alex’s journey as he disappears from Quebec. His mother Rose (Fanny Mallette) follows him, hoping he doesn’t do anything rash or worse, be someone else’s victim. Then we return to Alex’s perspective. He’s actually in Maine with his father (Paul Doucet), confronting him about the ways that he radicalized Alex. Again, a lot of this might have been true, but it’s still an overwrought fictionalization, a caricature of American culture and its overreaching influence in what seemed like the safe North.

The film also introduces a subplot explaining why Alex became the way he is. It does interesting things with that revelation. Mostly it’s a man mourning a girl or a woman but here we see Alex’ pain through Rose. But the actual information reduces the trauma of people as causes for them to lash out. Not every victim of abuse becomes a criminal. The execution of this revelation is also lacking, not giving Mallette a chance to bring nuance to such character information. The dialogue here also needed to be better than the cliches we’ve heard from other films.