NELLY

Canada, 2016, 101 minutes, Colour.
Mylene Mackay.
Directed by Anne Emond.

Nelly is a complex portrait of Isabel Fortier, an author of novels with explicit sexual content. She based her novels on her own sexual experiences. Ultimately, she took her own life.

Nelly was the name that she assumed for her work.

The film is set in the atmosphere of French Canada, where her novels had some popularity (with some popularity in France). This film is something of a tribute to Isabel Fortier as well as an expression of regret at her death.

The structure of the film is very important. While, in many ways, it shows the progress of her life, it also dramatises aspects of her novels as well as aspects of her own sexual behaviour. This means that the screenplay is not written in a direct linear fashion. Rather, it is something of a jigsaw, something of a cracked mirror, so to speak, where there is a variety of images of Nelly – and the audience has to work hard to decide just which aspect is being shown, how accurate this is to her life, what is fantasy, and what Nelly is drawing on for her experiences.

In some ways, the audience can piece together something of her life, scenes of herself as a child, and the different ages from the 20s into the 30s. There is a focus on her writing, and a rather more composed Nelly discussing her books, with agents, for publicity, interviews.

For and audience familiar with the 50 Shades, novels and films, there will be not so many surprises in the visualisation of the novels. Nelly is seen with her prostitute friends, their social lives, their discussions about their experiences. On the other hand, there is the reticent Nelly, calm and controlled. Then there is the personal Nelly in a very personalised relationship, complicated by her boyfriend’s devotion to her but his indulgence in cocaine and the ups and downs of their interactions.

So, with the complexity of the structure of the film and the variety of Nelly’s personas, the audience is continually comparing one persona with the other, realising that all this complexity is in the person of Isabel Fortier herself, her own personal life, personal depressions – which leads to her taking her own life.