A businessman falls asleep on a city bus, wakes to find it stopped on the highway and walks off into the dark woods. So begins Stéphane Lafleur’s debut feature, with a mysterious disappearance providing the impetus for a meditation on modern loneliness and loss. The film contemplates various characters, each only tangentially connected to the others, and depicts their aimless attempts at connection. Lucette, the wife of the missing businessman, refuses to accept her spouse’s absence. Chantal, a young hotel clerk who seems to have suffered an unspoken tragedy, leaves herself phone messages and calls the phone number printed on a box of popcorn to tell the company how much she enjoyed their product. Lafleur imbues the Quebec locations with a suburban homogeneity, framing the protagonists in beautifully composed images that suggest they are as much a part of the landscape as the drab concrete apartment buildings and hotels where they live. Though the film partakes of a recent movement toward intersecting, multiple narratives, it has a sense of humor unusual to other such fare, earning comparisons to deadpan artists like Aki Kaurismaki and Roy Andersson. Most unexpectedly of all, by its end, Continental manages to leave us with a sense of hope for its tragic characters.

Written by Stéphane Lafleur. Photographed by Sara Mishara. With Marie-Ginette Guay, Gilbert Sicotte, Fanny Mallette, Réal Bossé (103 min, Christal Films Distribution).