With a title like CURLING, one might expect a Canadian sports film along the lines of the comedy MEN WITH BROOMS, but this intentionally dreary French Québécois film moves into dark places born not out of psychosis but of loneliness and morbid solitude in an environment where a child's lack of schooling goes uninvestigated, a pile of frozen corpses goes undiscovered, and a child can be left to die on the side of a highway. Jean-Francois Sauvageau (Emmanuel Bilodeau, TAKING LIVES) lives on the outskirts of a snowy, desolate Quebec town with his daughter Julyvonne (the actor's own daughter Philomène Bilodeau) working as a maintenance man at a bowling alley and janitor at a nearby motel. He has a strict relationship with his daughter, educating her himself and expecting her to behave safely and responsibly when left home alone. His only friends - his boss at the bowling alley Kennedy (Roc LaFortune, IMMORTALS) and his niece Isabelle (Sophie Desmarais, HEARTBEATS) and his boss at the motel Odile (Muriel Dutil) and her husband Yvan (Yves Trudel) - try to get him to socialize for the sake of him and his daughter. Odile at least catches his interest by explaining to him the rules of the local popular sport curling, but he remains hesitant and even paranoid when it comes to exposing himself or his daughter to strangers (even though the usually compliant Julyvonne is starting to crave more human interaction). When a boy hit by a car dies in his care, he hides the body and withdraws even further; but a visit with his daughter to his imprisoned ex-wife (Johanne Haberlin) has him questioning his choices and his daughter's psychological well-being (his ex-wife describes her as "empty"). Realizing that he might not be so well in the head himself, Jean-Francois decides he needs to "take a break" and leaves Julyvonne on her own; but she might not be as grown-up and capable as he believes with only a pile of frozen corpses to keep her company.