Sarah préfère la course
Director: Chloé Robichaud
Writer: Chloé Robichaud
Cast: Sophie Desmarais, Jean-Sébastien Courchesne, Geneviève Boivin-Roussy, Hélène Florent, Micheline Lanctôt
Part of: identities Festival
Seen on: 13.6.2015

Plot:
Sarah (Sophie Desmarais) is just finishing school. Since her interest lies in running and running alone, she is overjoyed when she is accepted at uni, including the track team, as is her class mate Zoey (Geneviève Boivin-Roussy). But money is tight and the uni is far away. Her work colleague Antoine (Jean-Sébastien Courchesne) offers her a chance: he has wanted to get out of their hometown for a while and if the two of them get married, they can get a special grant for young married people that will keep them both afloat. Sarah agrees to the plan, but things are far from less complicated after she starts at uni.

Sarah Prefers to Run is a sensitive character study that feels very true in many instances, but ultimately wasn’t quite as engaging as it could have been.

True to the title, Sarah is a person who runs (away). She doesn’t get along with her mother, so she moves across the country for university. She has health problems, but she’ll be damned before she actually confronts them. And she definitely doesn’t want to think about her own sexuality (is she a lesbian? bi? ace? just-not-Antoine-sexual?) and who she may or may not love and whether she should talk about it. So she runs, consequences or future be damned, making running the ultimate act of disobedience to her surroundings and the demands that are put on her from all sides.

Unfortunately instead of making me accept that act of disobedience and accept Sarah with it, I found myself becoming one more party who started to lay their expectations and demands on Sarah as I watched the film. I started to wish for her to position herself somehow and to claim her own life instead of running away from it all. Especially since the film itself remains ambigious in pretty much everything and has a frustratingly open ending.

The film has many quiet moments that are engaging enough, but it is at its best when Antoine is present: he is the only character who has some life to him, he is extremely charming and an absolute cutie. Next to him, Sarah is a shy grey mouse who barely ever manages to break out of that mold. And that is certainly what the world sees when it looks at Sarah and Antoine – but it would have been the film’s job, in my opinion, to subvert that perception, to show Sarah’s qualities. But for that Sarah would have to hold still even for a second. But the film never really captures her – Sarah keeps running.

Ultimately that leaves the audience ever in Sarah’s dust, trying to keep up with her, but only ever seeing her from a distance. That is conceptually nice, but it makes only for a semi-engaging film.

Summarizing: not bad, but not great.