Here are our top flicks to see at this year's Rendez-Vous French Film Festival, which runs at various venues around Vancouver from this Wednesday (February 1) to February 12.

The Gardener (Quebec)

Shortly before he passed away in 2011, Frank Cabot invited a film crew to document Les Quatre Vents, the legendary garden he designed for the family estate in Quebec’s sprawling Charlevoix Municipality. His vision is mind-blowing. Monumental topiaries open up to reveal panoramic views of the Laurentians; a Japanese teahouse emerges out of nowhere; a reflecting pool sits at the foot of a compact Swedish castle—and on and on it goes, with visitors like Adrienne Clarkson falling over themselves to eulogize Cabot’s eight-hectare folly as genius. “You can never have too many delphiniums,” offers the soft-spoken gardener with a shrug.

Auditorium Jules-Verne, February 2 (7:30 p.m.); SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, February 12 (4 p.m.)

Mes nuits feront echo (Quebec)

Sophie Goyette’s feature debut travels from Montreal to Mexico to an unnamed city in China (and further on to a delicately metaphysical conclusion) in its effort to map the interior lives of three seemingly disparate characters, principally an inscrutably intense “failed” musician played by Éliane Préfontaine. She’s the magnetic centre of a film related through its formal audacity­—long takes, innovative sound, zero commercial pandering­—to the new wave of anglophone cinema based in Toronto. Don’t miss.

Auditorium Jules-Verne, February 3 (6:30 p.m.)

Embrasse-moi comme tu m’aimes (Quebec)

Veteran filmmaker André Forcier’s knack for perverse and occasionally violent whimsy finds a home in this tale of a paraplegic hatmaker, Berthe, with brazenly incestuous feelings for her twin brother. Forcier obviously means business when it comes to his piercing portrayal of Berthe’s deeper needs—her jealousy and fear of abandonment—so it’s no small miracle that this boisterous period confection has us both squirming and laughing in about equal measure.

SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, February 8 (8:30 p.m.)

Le peuple interdit (Quebec)

Alexandre Chartrand’s doc begins with a montage of epic Castellers—or human towers­—collapsing one after another before a thrilled crowd inside a packed Barcelona stadium. If it’s a bit on-the-nose, you can hardly blame the filmmaker for using a metaphor that was handed to him on a plate. This happens to be the end-point of the gargantuan march to assert Catalonian independence in Spain in 2014, a project that still thrives in the face of every conceivable hurdle—reasonable, legal, or otherwise—presented by the Spanish government. The relation to independence movements in Quebec and elsewhere is equally obvious, but Chartrand’s film buzzes not just with its on-the-ground currency; Le peuple interdit offers meaning for anyone thinking with growing conviction about resistance on a much grander and more critical scale.

Auditorium Jules-Verne, February 5 (7 p.m.); SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, February 10 (3 p.m.)

La reine-garçon (Finland/Canada/Germany/Sweden/France)

Malin Buska’s English is a bit iffy, but she brings a winning physicality to her portrayal of Kristina of Sweden, the 17th-century monarch whose flirtation with Catholicism was almost as upsetting to the court as her more hands-on flirtation with Countess Ebba Sparre (Sarah Gadon). Mika Kaurismäki’s international costume epic is quite the mongrel, playing fast and loose with history as it drops clanging anachronisms amid the handsome visual quotes (Ingmar Bergman, Carl Theodor Dreyer). It’s also hugely entertaining in a “so wrong its right” kind of way.

SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, February 11 (6 p.m.)