‘Billy’: Visions du Reel Review

Dir/scr: Lawrence Cote-Collins. Canada, 2024. 108mins

Twenty years of a troubled existence cross earlier than our eyes in Billy. Lawrence Cote-Collins’ deeply private documentary relates the story of her buddy Billy Poulin, his 2013 imprisonment for homicide and the analysis of schizophrenia that turned the important thing to understanding him. An lively, ingenious work is constructed round an intensive archive of Poulin’s personal filmmaking, and will tempt festivals in search of difficult tales with a robust human connection.

 There’s something of Boyhood in a movie constructed round footage of Billy at completely different instances over 20 years

Cote-Collins (the director of Ecartee (2016) and Bungalow (2022) met Poulin at Kino Montreal in 2008 they usually subsequently labored collectively on the quick No Ache, No Achieve (2009). She ended contact with him after he assaulted her in 2010, however they reconnected years later, when he was in jail. At the moment, Cote-Collins agreed to retrieve possessions that Poulin had left with a buddy; these included an enormous archive of cassettes, tapes and movie that offered her with “a entrance row seat to Billy’s previous”.

There’s something of Boyhood in a movie constructed round footage of Poulin at completely different instances over 20 years. We first see him in 2002 as he speaks on to digital camera, providing a pitiless summation of a life during which: “I’ve no associates. I smoke pot. I’m nearly out of money. I’ve nothing to do and I’m bored.” Exuding a manic power, he treats the viewer as a buddy and confidante, spilling out all his anxieties. He has a wild enthusiasm for making films and telling tales, displaying a passion for puppets, dolls, wigs and position taking part in. In a unique life, he might need made a profession from his ardour.

Poulin’s personal movies are the center of a dense documentary that’s heavy with voice-over narration. Cote-Collins expands her focus to include footage from the police interrogation on the time of Poulin’s arrest for 2 murders in 2012. (He was given a life sentence, with the potential of a conditional launch after 11 years.) She additionally consists of fragments of her personal story, telling of her alcoholic previous, sobriety and determination to volunteer at prisons that ultimately introduced concerning the renewed contact with Poutin.

Cote-Collins echoes Poutin’s splintered, chaotic thoughts within the rush of the modifying, the dynamic move created by a number of cuts and the usage of assorted animation methods, together with stop-motion sequences, to convey emotional states. There are additionally excerpts from the limitless pages of his diaries and notebooks that seem like hieroglyphics.  All of it makes for an exuberant, involving story that desires to know Poulin slightly than choose him. The movie is devoted to Poulin’s victims and Cote-Collins retains the small print of the murders to a minimal.  

The sharp focus stays on Poulin and his way of thinking, leaving different key components to 1 facet. Poulin’s household cooperated within the movie however are principally off digital camera briefly excerpts of house films from his childhood. The household perspective may, nonetheless, have proved helpful, and we’re additionally left wanting extra of Cote-Collins story and why her involvement with Poulin has meant a lot to her. 

Poulin’s house films, quick movies and rambling YouTube tirades reveal an exhausting persona delivering stream-of-consciousness rants to a world that gives him no consolation. On the time, they had been each an try to make artwork from his life and a launch for all of the paranoia, disappointment and resentment constructing inside him. Solely on reflection do they turn out to be cries for assist – Poulin’s analysis of schizophrenia got here as soon as he was imprisoned.

Probably the most satisfying side of this story is the way in which it ends, as Cote-Collins’ loyal help and correct medicine assist Poulin in direction of taking accountability for his actions and beginning to perceive the sickness that has outlined his grownup life.