A playful nod to Reefer Madness and other florid, lurid cautionary films about teenagers and the dangers they face, Heavy Soul tells the tale of nice girl Dakota Thompson, and how a seemingly prim closed-mouth kiss before marriage is the first step towards promiscuity, pain, and addiction. And although the particular "dope" young Dakota becomes a "fiend" for isn't something you'd normally find in one of those classic films, all the other familiar tropes are there: the overly-dramatic, purple-prosed voice-over; (which refers to the easy-girl with the tight-sweater/padded brassier combo and the duck-tailed bad boy as the "Devil's spawn"); a party thrown in the absence of parental authority; dangerous rock-and-roll music on the hi-fi; a good kid; a fall from grace; and even an inexplicable musical interlude.

With rich, color-saturated sets and whimsical scene transitions, Heavy Soul is a delightful to watch. Impressively, despite the slightly surreal (and sometimes silly) tack the story takes, Heavy Soul successfully treads the fine line between parodying the sensational nature of the genre while still treating addiction as a serious and disturbing issue; one fraught with unpleasant struggles and dire consequences. A great deal of the credit for this success should be attributed to actress Sally Conway (who alternately reminded me of Scarlett Johansson and a young Winona Ryder throughout the film). Conway gives a consistently sincere performance as the saint/sinner Dakota Fanning, no matter how campy the dialog or odd the narrative becomes.

Even with its tongue-in-cheek approach to the issue, Heavy Soul proves a good reminder to "just say no," and to steer clear of the sort of people your Mother you warned about. Otherwise, It will all end in tears. Tears and electroshock therapy. And nobody wants that.

Well, nobody except, perhaps, some of the characters in Extase De Chair Brisée, who exhibit a particular passion for pain.

In contrast to Heavy Soul's rock-and-roll soundtrack and proud proclamation that it is presented in "Full Color!", short-film Extase De Chair Brisée (which seems to loosely translate to "The Ecstasy of the Broken Skin") is presented entirely in silent black and white. Well, "silent" isn't exactly accurate. Let me say instead that it contains no dialog, and the soundtrack is disquietingly made up of a tunneled wind, occasionally punctuated with a sound reflective of whats taking place on screen: limb fingers combing through loose rock, the squeal of a distant train, the buzz of an electric drill.

Extase begins with a young woman aimlessly wandering the railroad tracks. She is quick and openly waylaid, brutalized and sexually assaulted by two men in leather pants and industrial masks. Her ordeal is halted by a bandaged dom and her masked, leashed, pet slave who stumble upon the scene. However, instead of assisting the young woman, the mummified master further adds insult to injury (not to mention injury to injury) by taking a torch the battered protagonist.

Clearly, this is not a friendly town.

Following her attack, the limping protagonist dons a mask of her own to re-enter the territory incognito, and proceeds to gets her violent revenge..and perhaps more than a little pleasure, too.

At 16 minutes long, Extase does not spend time establishing the socio-political climate of the film's universe. I took it that since the trains still ran and factories still seemed to be standing, the world of Extase is not post-apocalyptic, despite the industrial-style masks, shredded costumes, and the territorial, gang-like behavior exhibited by the masked characters in the film. Instead, I'll brush off (my otherwise useless) degree in English literature and consider the fact that the events in the film are meant to be taken more metaphorically than literally. The masked characters are chaotic, socially deviant, actively mix violence with sexual activity, and randomly attack seemingly innocent, "normal" people for no greater sin than traversing the train yard. Ergo, Extase may be suggesting that sexual deviancy is a danger to mainstream society; or, conversely, that society forces said deviants to hide their true natures under masks, and once an individual's identity is so suppressed, they could easily succumb to those same urges. (Why would an "innocent" wander, unescorted, in that area unless they were, at the very least, curious?) Perhaps the message is a more universal warning that we will invariably become what we seek to destroy. Or, maybe film makers Pierre-Luc Vaillancourt and Frédérick Maheux and their pals just wanted an excuse to put on masks and play with power tools down at the train yard. It's difficult to say.

One also has to take into consideration the voyeuristic, gonzo documentary-like nature of the cinematography. Like the soundtrack, the visuals are full of noise - the camera work is disjointed, shaky, full of pops, scratches and sudden, inexplicable stops and starts. It is very aware of itself - there is even a moment when a character waits while a finger is briefly seen removing a speck from the lens. The POV follows the action on up close and on foot without ever participating in what transpires - actively nor passively; a stark reminder that before one passes judgement on any of the characters, be it positive or negative, they must also question their role and responsibility as a willing spectator.

Unfortunately, for a film in which brutality places such an integral role, the acts of violence presented in Extase are largely stagey and unconvincing; the cinematic suggestion that I was a voyeur on the scene was often disrupted by awareness that the actors seemed to be taking great care not to actual hurt one another. (A sentiment I fully support, incidentally; it is merely that I find it difficult to fully suspend my disbelief when I am frequently reminded that the narrative in which I am meant to emotional and viscerally engage is entirely fake.) Scenes where the violence was suggested to the audience rather than shown are the most effective - particularly the close-ups of the protagonist face during the opening attack sequence, and the first vision of a modified strap-on used in the final scene of the film (which made me cringe and bite my nails). Even now, I find the thought of that particular...weapon...fairly terrifying, even though I quickly grew bored its use in the final scene (at nearly 1/4 of the shorts running time, the culmination of the movie quickly becomes redundant). Overall, Extase is one of those movies that is more interesting in idea than in execution; better to debate over a few beers than to actually watch.