Maelstrom ★★ 2000

Offbeat mixture of the surreal, the whimsical, and the melodramatic. A drunken Bibliane (Croze) commits a hit-and-run and reads in the next day's newspaper that the man, a fishmonger, has died. Guiltstricken, she meets the man's son, a deep sea diver named Evian (Verrault), at the funeral home and he mistakes her for a concerned neighbor. Bibliane's friendship with Evian leads to an affair but she becomes compelled to tell him the truth and accept whatever punishment he decrees. There's lots of water and fish imagery. French with subtitles. 86m/C VHS, DVD . CA Marie Josee Croze, Jean-Nicholas Verreault, Stephanie Morgenstern, Bobby Beshro; D: Denis Villenueve; W: Denis Villenueve; C: Andre Turpin; M: Pierre Desrochers. Genie ‘00: Actress (Croze), Cinematog., Director (Villenueve), Film, Screenplay.

mael·strom / ˈmālˌsträm; -strəm/ • n. a powerful whirlpool in the sea or a river. ∎ fig. a scene or state of confused and violent movement or upheaval: the train station was a maelstrom of crowds a maelstrom of violence and recrimination.

maelstrom whirlpool in the Arctic Ocean off Norway; also gen. XVII. — early modDu. maelstrom (now maalstroom), f. maalen grind, whirl round + stroom STREAM.

maelstrom a powerful whirlpool in the sea or a river, named (in the late 17th century, from early modern Dutch) after a mythical whirlpool supposed to exist in the Arctic Ocean, west of Norway. The use of maelstrom as a proper name seems to come from Dutch maps, for example in Mercator's Atlas (1595).