Origami is a 2017 sci-fi thriller about a visual artist who specializes in Japanese art, encountering a mysterious man who makes him discover his latent gift for time travel.
As an extension of the Fantasia event, Les Fantastiques Week-ends du Cinéma Québecois comes the world premiere of Origami by French-Canadian director, Patrick Demers. Before the movie starts, Demers who is present advises the crowd that the less we know about the film the better. He hopes that the audience will fall into the main character’s shoes and wishes everyone happy travels. Upon finishing Origami, we definitely feel the same way hence, we will not only avoid all spoilers but this review will be completely on various technical aspects and stay far away from the story itself. The only thing in regards of the story is that Origami is an absolute treat as both a time travel movie and a dramatic thriller. The story is intriguing. It will make the audience ask question after question as we willingly and patiently wait for the answers at the end, without knowing if there really will be one. The best of movies will still motivate you to try to figure it out while waiting, letting the story take us on their journey and Origami achieves that.
Right from the start of Origami, the sound design and atmosphere is already set for a world full of mystery. The tones and the lights are done well. It uses its cinematography cleverly of both capturing an entire scene and zooming in to capture emotion. The score itself is subtle in parts, dropping out in important parts to create the right mood while in other parts, looming and building in the background. The sound also is what creates the time travel transition as well as the visual of it all. What time travel movies mostly have issues with is how to set a believable time travel concept that works. Origami keeps what we know, reinforces that by adding in a simple description and lets us learn about time travel as its main character, David (Francois Arnaud) explores it as well.
While Origami has various characters, it is very much a one man talent show for Francois Arnaud, who plays the main character, David Marceau. A quick look at Francois Arnaud’s filmography and you can spot some familiar titles from TV series Borgias and Blindspot. A key element of this sci-fi thriller goes into finding a great balance of how to present this character and in short, he nails it. He creates the right emotions and feels human. We learn about him during the movie, just enough to connect with the character. Here is where we talk about the other characters’ being one dimensional. They only are there to serve a particular purpose, be it to explain time travel to David or being a parent role, for quick examples. This is where Origami falls short as some scenes automatically become dispensable and even pointless, creating a slight drag, making the parts with David the only ones that cause intrigue and mystery.
Origami is not perfect but it is a rare appearance in the French-Canadian landscape as it dives into the sci-fi territory exploring the realms of time travel. Francois Arnaud delivers a strong performance and the story makes us question and piece together the plot along the way to keep it intriguing. It pulls a few stops that achieved its purpose. While the plot drags a little in the centre stemming from characters that aren’t fleshed out enough, the main character’s exciting journey is still well worth a visit.