''There Are No False Undertakings'' (french: Il n'y a pas de faux métier) is a Canadian comedy film, directed by

Olivier Godin Olivier Godin is a Canadian film director and screenwriter from Quebec. He directed a number of short films before premiering his full-length directoral debut, ''Le Pays des âmes'', at the 2011 Festival du nouveau cinéma. He followed up in 2014 w ...

and released in 2020.André Duchesne
"Quatre films québécois en première mondiale au FNC"
'' La Presse'', August 25, 2020. The film stars Tatiana Zinga Botao as Marie-Cobra Tremblay, a writer who is working on a screenplay she hopes that

Denzel Washington Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. (born December 28, 1954) is an American actor and filmmaker. He has been described as an actor who reconfigured "the concept of classic movie stardom". Throughout his career spanning over four decades, Washington ha ...

will star in; however, her work is complicated by the disapproval of her ex-husband Rosaire (François-Simon Poirier) and her best friend Mélusine (Leslie Mavangui), Washington's (Fayolle Jean) lack of interest in the project as he is more focused on the goal of getting cast as Angel in a new ''

Buffy the Vampire Slayer ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' is an American supernatural fiction, supernatural drama television series created by writer and director Joss Whedon. It is based on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer (film), 1992 film of the same name, also written by W ...

'' reboot, and the discouraging feedback of professional screenwriter Croquette ( Éric K. Boulianne)."WEEK ONE: Five films to watch at Festival du Nouveau Cinéma 2020"
''

Cult MTL ''Cult MTL'' is an English language arts, culture and news website and monthly print publication, based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Its first print edition appeared on 7 September 2012. It was created only a few months after Montreal's last Engli ...

'', October 7, 2020. The film's cast also includes

Florence Blain Mbaye Florence Blain Mbaye, sometimes credited as Florence Blain, is a Canadian actress, singer and dancer. She is most noted for her role in the 2013 film ''Another House (L'autre maison)'', for which she garnered a Canadian Screen Award nomination for ...

, Alexis Martin, Ève Duranceau,

Schelby Jean-Baptiste Schelby Jean-Baptiste is a Haitian Canadian actress. She is most noted for her performance in the 2015 film '' Scratch'', for which she was a nominee for Best Supporting Actress at the 18th Quebec Cinema Awards in 2016. She has also appeared in t ...

and Jean-Marc Dalpé. The film premiered on October 7, 2020 at the Festival du nouveau cinéma.

Critical response

Alex Rose of ''

'' reviewed the film positively, writing that it "goes in every direction at once, a dialogue-dense comedy of manners that subscribes to no particular sense of genre or comedic timing. Though somewhat of a meta-deconstruction of the process of writing a film (with copious jabs at the wonderfulness of grants) and of the invisible borders of intellectualism (prompting the immortal line “ Pasolini, y’est-tu sur Netflix?!”), it’s also just fucking weird from top to bottom. It’s rare to see a film that’s so playful and yet so comfortable with alienating the majority of people who might lay eyes on it, which puts it in its own category on the Quebec cinematic landscape." He additionally noted that "it's also extremely rare to see this many people of colour in a Quebec movie that isn’t about street gangs or refugees." For '' Screen Anarchy'', Shelagh Rowan-Legg wrote that "At nearly two hours, it could have probably trimmed its time a bit; absurdism can get tiring when the audience has to keep up with all the complicated connections, and perhaps a few of the vignettes didn't quite find their feet. Yet overall, There Are No False Undertakings is a bizarre journey into the oddities of a collective imagination, one in which you will likely find your own thoughts (ones you thought to never speak aloud) reflected in delightful characters and their deadpan yet whimsical understakings ic"Shelagh Rowan-Legg
"Montreal Nouveau 2020 Review: THERE ARE NO FALSE UNDERTAKINGS, Vignettes of the Odd and Surreal"
'' Screen Anarchy'', October 19, 2020.

References

External links

*{{IMDb title, 13199096 2020 films 2020 comedy films Canadian comedy films Quebec films Films set in Quebec Films shot in Quebec Black Canadian films 2020s French-language films French-language Canadian films 2020s Canadian films