The Taste of Your Scales

There is a very specific atmosphere throughout The Taste of Your Scales.

If one was to merely write out the premise, it might sound somewhat banal. A sensitive young teenager, Jasmin (Oscar Desgagnes) accompanies his father (Stephan Cloutier) when there is an emergency at work and has to come face-to-face with the realities of working at the fish factory. However, this is a film with a strange energy, and unnatural quality that is pervasive enough that when fanciful truths about the factory are revealed – experimentation, cloning, and more – it feels utterly of a a piece. Rafael Beauchamp’s film channels the kind of dark fantasy found in the work of Guillermo Del Toro or Jean-Pierre Jeunet in a potent sketch of a boy reaching a kind of maturity.

That is the kind in which our illusions about our parents are shattered. For most people this is realisation that our parents are just people, fallible and fragile like us. For Jasmin, who wants to connect with papa, and so goes with him to the factory late at night to help deal with an incident, it is perhaps more of a fundamental moral failing, as he sees what exactly the place is like and what exactly the “new product” he tried at the dinner table was.

Everything in the film nudges toward the strange and surreal. Simran Dewan’s photography has a greenish tint to it; even when beautifully shot and framed, this is a world every so slightly off-kilter compared to our own. Charles Humenry’s music adds a similarly otherworldly quality. As an injured worker blames and escaped creature and the crew, including Jasmin, go searching for in in dark passages filled with pipes and steam, the film almost becomes a horror. However, this is not a film about Jasmin proving himself a man in a traditional sense, but about him discovering how to be his own man. With a quiet act of rebellion at The Taste of Your Scales’ denouement, he just might do that.

Director, screenplay: Rafael Beauchamp
Cast: Oscar Desgagnes, Stephan Cloutier, Yvon Aucoin, Brittney Canda
Producer: Leonie Hurtubise
Cinematography: Simran Dewan
Editing: Alexis Viau
Music: Charles Humenry
Sound: Cristophe Voyer
Art direction: Kenny Dorval
Production company: Colonelle Films (Canada)
Venue: Oldenburg Film Festival (Shorts)
In language
16 minutes

Read our coverage of more short films in our Verdict Shorts section.