Movie Review: '14 Days, 12 Nights' is Canada's Academy Award Contender

The complexities at play in the French Canadian feature film 14 Days, 12 Nights revolve around grief and how it can spread like a virus. In the case of 14 Days, 12 Nights, the grief began in Canada with the death of a young girl in a tragic accident. From there the grief travels to the young girl’s home country of Vietnam as her adopted mother takes her ashes back to her home country, presumably to lay them to rest.

From there, the grief travels to the orphanage where 15 years ago, Isabelle Brodeur (Anne Dorval) and her husband, Pierre (Francois Papineau), came to adopt a child that they would take home to Canada. Anne now returns with her daughter's ashes in tow and with the goal of informing the woman who had raised the baby for a full year before the Brodeur’s arrived, that the child has died.

The young orphanage worker never wanted to let the baby go, eager to raise her on her own and she naturally takes the loss hard despite 15 years and thousands of miles distance. She informs Anne that there is one other person who deserves to know what happened even more than her. A flashback reveals that the baby arrived at the orphanage with a note concealed in its swaddling cloth.

It was a note from the child’s mother, Thuy Nguyen (Leanna Chea). Thuy didn’t want to give the baby up for adoption but her overbearing grandmother forced the issue. She hoped the note might help her daughter find her one day. Now, it will help Isabelle to find her and give her the awful news that she will never meet the daughter she was forced to give up. That is if Isabelle can bring herself to reveal the news.

Thuy is now in her 30s, beautiful and living a happy double life as an artist and part time tour guide. When Isabelle sees her, it’s like a lightning bolt, she looks a lot like her daughter. Isabelle decides to hire Thuy as her guide for her trip, under the guise of wanting to see the sights of Vietnam. Thuy proves to be remarkably interesting, friendly and confessional. Isabelle is drawn to this woman as a friend and her conflicted emotions about revealing the secret about her daughter become a raging inner turmoil.

I will leave you to discover what happens next. 14 Days, 12 Nights is not a mystery, you can likely predict what will happen. That’s not what the movie is about. 14 Days, 12 Nights is about grief and connection. It’s a film about what we lose when someone dies and what we gain from expanding our circle with new people and experiences. It’s about whether telling someone the truth is more important than protecting them from harm.

Anne Dorval’s performance in 14 Days, 12 Nights is heart-rending. She keeps her emotions close to the vest but sadness permeates her entire being. Her manner is grief, her very presence is soul sick and yet she does what she can to keep from breaking. Thus, when the dam finally does break we are all overwhelmed. It’s a masterful performance and one aided greatly by Leanna Chea’s incredibly charismatic and thoughtful supporting performance.

14 Days, 12 Nights was directed by Jean Phillippe Duval and written by Marie Vien. The film has a very deliberate pace that some may find to be slow. If pace is an issue for you, especially in a film with subtitles, you might not enjoy 14 Days, 12 Nights. I don’t have that problem. I found 14 Days, 12 Nights to be engrossing. The story is incredibly sad but very compelling. The cinematography by Yves Belanger is gorgeous and gave my mind a place to go during the lingering moments.

14 Days,12 Nights is Canada’s submission for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award category.