From Maelström to Incendies, Denis Villeneuve has displayed a propensity for articulating the human impact of violence through a purposely flamboyant style that’s discomfiting in its emotional candor and sincerity.  Before the Oscar-nominated Incendies cemented his reputation as a major film artist, the Québécois filmmaker made Polytechnique, an austere dramatization of the École Polytechnique shooting massacre that claimed the lives of 14 women on December 6, 1989. Though it’s as schematic in construction as Incendies, the film doesn’t grind along to a ponderous plot; it’s unnerving abstraction of its subject matter more daringly relays Villeneuve’s view of the human cost of gender warfare. – Slant