Whitewash

A strange and effective drama that maintains its darkest secrets until the end, Whitewash is built around a superb performance by Thomas Haden Church as a man who is largely alone and barely surviving. Church plays Bruce, a widower and snowplow operator in rural Quebec. During a harsh winter, Bruce runs his snowplow into Paul (Marc Labrèche), who is walking down the middle of a street at night, killing him instantly. Bruce flees with the dead man's body and buries it deep in the snowy woods, where he hides out for days, trying to keep warm and buying or stealing supplies as needed. Between imagined conversations with the police, Bruce is seen with Paul in flashbacks that gradually reveal the nature of their odd relationship. Co-writer/director Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais nicely orchestrates the film's mysterious tone, slowly revealing the taciturn Bruce as something of a man-child who has been lost since the death of his wife. Recommended. (T. Keogh)