Gabrielle Côté’s inventive short film RE/ROUTE is a clever, persuasive reminder that cities should be built for the people who live in and around them, not merely for the companies and traffic that pass through.

Blending documentary footage with striking visual collage, RE/ROUTE imagines two competing visions of urban life. One is ruled by cars, productivity, unchecked capitalism and individualism; the other prioritises connection, leisure and inclusion. As familiar cityscapes morph into surreal tableaux, the film invites us to reconsider how urban design shapes our communities, our relationships, our futures.

Sometimes, a short film can make you look at something familiar in an entirely different way. With Gabrielle Côté’s RE/ROUTE, she turns the average trip through the city, to work, back home, the commute, into something thoroughly thought-provoking, with a fantastically inventive visual flair that you will find yourself rewatching just to catch little snippets you may have missed the first time.

The team behind Côté also deserves credit, as the work they delivered is nothing short of exceptional. Editor Julie Bor lets each transition shine. The pace and rhythm of the film are a massive success: although, with such a short film length, the temptation might be to rush to the next moments, there are times we linger, allowing us to fully see what Côté has envisioned.

Equally, the talent in the compositing is so important and successful here as Ann-Laury Côté and Alexis Veilleux create a purposefully unsettling world for us to watch. One filled with more car lanes than you can imagine, houses with no personality, everyone coming and going home at the exact time. In comparison to the open, community-filled alternative, it affects you. The joy in their work is actually in how it isn’t this perfectly constructed world; it verges on this odd, dreamlike place that jars you.

With Mathieu Drolet’s score, RE/ROUTE keeps a firm hold of its hypnotic tone as it draws us into the ever-shifting urban landscapes. Importantly, his score doesn’t just fill the quiet moments but connects and, at times, purposefully disjoints us from what we are seeing.

At a mere nine minutes, Côté has plenty to say about how urban spaces are designed and the fear of how they could very much look in the future. But not only that, she shows us how it can and will affect us, the average person, how it will drive our identity into something far more systematic and drive us to leave the community aspect that deep down we all yearn for in our lives. RE/ROUTE is as engaging a montage-based short film as you will find, one that will leave you with plenty to ponder after the credits roll.

★★★★

Support Us

I am just a small website in this big, wide world, though I would love to make it a big, wonderful entity. That would bring in more costs. So, for now, all I hope is to make Upcoming On Screen self-sufficient. Well, enough to make any website fees less of a worry for me in the future. You can support the website below…

Patreon

You can support us in a variety of ways (other than that wonderful word of mouth) and those lovely follows. If you’re inclined to help, you can support us via Patreon; find our link here! We don’t want to ask you much, so for now, we have limited our tiers to £1.50 and £3.50. These will, of course, grow as we plan more here at Upcoming On Screen.

Social Media

You can also support us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Blue Sky by following and liking. Every single one helps!

Thanks for reading; every view helps more than you might think (we have fragile egos). Until next time.