Maelström

Maelström follows Bibiane Champagne, a twenty-five-year-old woman from a wealthy family who runs a chain of luxury clothing boutiques. After a difficult period of personal turmoil, she accidentally hits a pedestrian while driving and leaves the scene. The man, a fishmonger, makes it home and dies there, and Bibiane's life slides into chaos as guilt takes hold and she tries to cover up what she did. When she seeks out the victim's family, she meets his son, Evian, and becomes drawn into a relationship built on a truth he does not know. The story is narrated by a fish.

Denis Villeneuve directed and wrote the screenplay. It is the second of the thirteen films he has directed, arriving after Cosmos and before Polytechnique. Marie-Josée Croze plays Bibiane, with Jean-Nicolas Verreault as Evian, Stephanie Morgenstern as Claire Gunderson, and Pierre Lebeau voicing the fish. Roger Frappier and Luc Vandal produced the Canadian film, with Téléfilm Canada, SODEC and Max Films among the production companies. It runs eighty-seven minutes.

Reception was moderate on both sides. On IMDb the film holds 6.7/10 from around 8,000 votes, indicating a reasonably positive response from a fairly large audience, while on TMDB it has 6.2/10 from about 199 votes. A critics' rating of 6.8/10 from thirty-nine reviews places critical opinion slightly above both audience scores.