Boris Without Beatrice (2016)

Dark and introspective, this multi-layered relationship drama revolves around an immaculately dressed middle-aged Quebec businessman with a piercing gaze Boris Malinovsky (James Hyndman), who leads an exceptionally lavish and luxurious lifestyle. Having achieved great success in life, Boris is snobbish and arrogant.

He is tired of his wife's crippling depression. Beatrice (Simone Elise-Gerard), a senior minister in the Canadian government, has hidden herself and taken a leave of absence. Placing another executive in charge of his factory operations, Boris takes time off to be with his silent, bedridden wife amid the lush green seclusion of their country house. She is looked after there by Klara (Isolda Dychauk), a young care worker, while Boris seeks comfort, or at least diversion, in an affair with his employee Helga (Dounia Sichov). His daughter, Justine (Laetitia Isambert-Denis), is a social justice warrior, ashamed of her right-wing industrialist father and unsympathetic about her stepmother's melancholia.

Boris is a cold, unpleasant man, but flashes of happy times with Beatrice, showing that his love for his wife is sincere.

The turning point comes when he receives an enigmatic summons in the mail to go to a nearby quarry one night and meet a stranger who offers to help. That unnamed man (Denis Lavant) seems to be mostly an all-seeing oracle who identifies himself as both a judge and a friend.

At first, Boris continues his unrepentant behavior, beginning a sexual relationship with Klara while unceremoniously dumping Helga. He also gives a frosty welcome to the solicitous Prime Minister and is openly hostile toward the government-appointed psychiatrist. But gradually, the voice of the stranger convinces Boris that his arrogance has made Beatrice's condition worse. He may even be the cause of it.

As Boris starts reaching out to Justine and to his emotionally remote mother (Louise Laprade), who responds with blunt evasiveness to the uestion of whether she loves him, Boris must introspect and question the value of his achievements. We Beatrice ever regain her health, and how will the ugly clash between Helga and Klara unravel?