Out Standing Review
Out Standing (2025) Film Review from the 50th Annual Toronto International Film Festival, a movie directed and written by Mélanie Charbonneau, and starring Nina Kiri, Vincent Leclerc, Antoine Pilon, Stephen Kalyn, Conrad Pla, Andreas Apergis, and Nicolas Fontaine.
Out Standing begins with a tantalizing mystery and, throughout the three acts of the film, proceeds to lay the foundation for the eventual answer to that quandary. The question–why did Captain Marie Perron resign from the Canadian Armed Forces?
The answer to that question is terrible but also to be expected, which is unfortunate to say but true. Captain Perron is a threat to the status quo in one of the last male-dominated fields in Canada, a premiere establishment for the tough willing to put their life on the line for their country.
Like the main characters in North Country and Men of Honor, Perron faces incident after incident of put-downs, sabotaging, and derogatory comments from instructors, commanding officers, and her fellow soldiers. As female recruit after female recruit quits, the viewer can see the escalation situation from the male soldiers’ point of view—if they push Perron just a little more, she’ll quit too, and then they will be free of a woman in their ranks.
Nina Kiri has to show through facial acting the suppressed anger Perron feels when faced with humiliations that her male counterparts never have to deal with. It’s her discipline and the brain behind it; lashing out would give her commanders cause against her, which leads to Perron’s eventual rise to the rank of major. I don’t know how easy it is to conjure rage, but I imagine that emotion, with a suppression layer over it, is a mentally arduous place to get to for an actor or actress. Kiri pulls it off in some of the most damning moments in the film.
Out Standing shows, in part, how Perron is able to withstand the mental and physical abuse through present-day scenes and flashbacks of her home life. She’s wanted to be an armed forces officer since she was fourteen years old and comes from a military family. The viewer can infer from this that Perron partially knew beforehand what was in store for her when she joined the military. That reality, and much more, is what Perron is forced to adapt to with ceaseless stoicism.
The incidents surrounding the tree during training and afterward are strange segments of the film. For such a harsh moment of training in the middle of the night, why is there a photographer documenting it? Why is that person taking photos of military trainees strapped to a tree? What purpose, in any way, does that serve? The viewer does not think about this during the film. They are busy rooting for Perron. This reflection occurs afterward. The second puzzle piece is not so much strange as it is ill-conceived—Perron trusts a stranger, a reporter. A preemptive strike turns into a self-own, a stark contrast to how Perron handled herself while enlisted—steady, thoughtful, and controlled.
Perron is the epitome of being career-minded, making staggering choices in the pursuit of keeping her professional life on track. Those choices are at the heart of her personal life. These decisions are shown through Perron’s eyes; in some cases, she is the only person in her circle of friends and family that knows about them. She carries the incidents and decisions in silence. The viewer could say that Perron is like Galadriel in season one of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and Nina Sayers in Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, except Perron isn’t driven to extremes; extremes are directed at her, and she absorbs, digests, and keeps moving, like a shark, to her ultimate goal—being the best soldier she can be, but also, being the best fellow soldier she can be, when she allowed to do so.
When the reason why Captain Perron resigned is revealed, the viewer knows Perron by this point, what she’s done, and what she’s sacrificed. Her decision not to suffer further humiliation, on her official career record this time, makes sense. Rude behavior is one thing, but the betrayal of a higher-tier next posting that she’d earned through multiple tours and rank, combined with the “pregnant” comment (and her commanding officer musing about a formal complaint by her), made clear the only reasonable move left open to Perron. She realized no matter how hard she tried, they weren’t going to let her succeed. The old guard, men, wouldn’t allow it.
The women that followed Captain Perron into the armed services were given a relentless symbol to look up to and aspire to be. In a sense, Perron’s legacy became more powerful because of everything she endured, not by what she was prevented from achieving in her career.
Rating: 7.5/10
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