Berlin: Denis Cote on "Pandemic-Approved" 'Social Hygiene' Comedy
Courtesy of Lou Scramble; Thomas Niedermueller/WireImage The Canadian auteur rarely strays from a fixed-camera tableau and socially distanced characters on screen, even though his 13th film has been six years in the making, well before the COVID-19 crisis. Denis Cotes' absurdist French language comedy Social Hygiene opens with a wide shot of Antonin, a philosopher-cum-petty thief, standing in a field more than two meters from his long-suffering sister Solvieg in a scene dominated by a lush Quebec countryside. But with with his Berlin Encounters sidebar film, the Canadian director rarely depa...