UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE - Mark Reviews Movies

Universal Language, Oscilloscope Laboratories

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 11, 2025

If there is a universal language in Universal Language, it might be melancholy, but then again, there are characters here who are perfectly content. Maybe it's the general absurdity of life, because here's a story that's about seemingly unconnected people connecting in strangely unexpected ways—including, but not limited to, a bill of currency frozen in a block of ice, a glasses-stealing turkey, and a tour guide whose sights of interest include a briefcase that has been sitting on the same bus bench for almost four decades.

Then again, co-writer/director Matthew Rankin's film is also quite grounded in everyday concerns, such as wanting or needing that frozen bill, and in how there is meaning in these assorted connections. Trying to place the mood of this film is almost as difficult as attempting to explain its story, which subtly weaves through time and features several characters who seem like jokes, only for some of them and their actions to take the spotlight by the tale's end.

This is not a criticism of the film, of course, because that confusion and the sense of surprise is clearly built into this narrative. It wants us to engage with these characters, this setting, and the nebulous feeling the story creates beyond some fanciful comedy about life in modern-day Winnipeg. It's funny enough that the underlying sincerity of this material is sneaky and becomes fairly poignant by the end.

The story does begin in Winnipeg, although it will move to somewhere in Quebec and to a different time period without us even really noticing the shift. We meet a schoolteacher named M. Bilodeau (Mani Soleymanlou), who has returned from a trip away from the city to try to control a disorderly group of eclectic students. All of them have dreams, whether that be to become a fashion photographer (That kid is dressed like he belongs in the 1960s and carries a camera everywhere) or to become a famous comedian (That child is dressed like Groucho Marx). The teacher, when he's not shooting down their ambitions, only wishes his class would disrupt learning and interrupt him in French.

Like most of the characters here, the classroom is filled with people of Iranian descent, and indeed, this neighborhood of Winnipeg is shown to be a lovely fusion of Persian and Canadian cultures. It's impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends, as the local chain coffee shop—that apparent staple of Canadian life—has signs in Persian outside but still sells all of its usual fare inside. There's also the attitude of the locals, though, which initially feels like a satire of the stereotypical view of Canadians as polite and neighborly. If there's truth in that, the characters here fit it to a T.

There isn't necessarily a main character in Rankin, Ila Firouzabadi, and Pirouz Nemati's screenplay, but it does follow one man with regularity. He's Matthew, played by the director as a stone-faced wanderer. He has come home to Winnipeg after a brief career as a government bureaucrat in Quebec (The scene of him quitting is a hilarious, self-contained satire of that kind of culture, taking place in a sparsely decorated but oddly disorienting office space). He returns to the city as a kind of outsider now, recognizing everything from his childhood home to that coffee place but also discovering that everything has changed.

What's important to the tone and themes of the film is that the changes to the city aren't what make Matthew an outsider. He is as welcome here now as he would have been when he lived there. Indeed, he might be even more welcome, as we see when Matthew returns to the house where he grew, finds it occupied by a new family of Iranian origin, and is invited in to look around at his leisure and join the current owners for a meal. The man of the house later tells Matthew that he is always welcome, because it is and always will be his home.

Ultimately, Matthew's goal is to visit his mother, whom he hasn't seen in many years, but the screenplay extends beyond that. We also meet a pair of kids, Negin (Rojina Esmaeili) and Nazgol (Saba Vahedyousefi), from Bilodeau's class, whose search for a friend's lost glasses has them discovering the frozen banknote. They now have a new mission: to get the money.

This is also when we meet Massoud (Nemati), the local tour guide whose reputation has already preceded him. He makes the best with what the city has to offer him, making quite the show of local parking garages (pointing out that it was the site of "the Parallel Parking Incident of 1958"), an apartment building (When a tourist asks if anyone famous lived there, he insists it has been filled with "nice people"), and a mall's now-dry fountain, which was really quite the sight when it actually worked.

All of these stories intertwine in little or major ways, but they're always significant, such as how an unthinking act of kindness on Negin's part helps Matthew. Rankin's approach to staging, with long shots—in terms of both distance and time—making up most of the framing, gives everything a certain remove, which feels right for this brand of dry comedy.

Universal Language is quite funny, too, but its underlying, difficult-to-place mood gives the film its heart, as Matthew longs for a sense of belonging and finds—too late, perhaps—that it is and was always right in front of him. On second thought, that mood and the film's emotional impact might be simpler to describe than it seems.

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