Although Le Confessional strips away many layers of deceit and intrigue for a wholly unexpected resolution to its principal mystery -- the true father of the protagonist's adopted brother -- it's not as suspenseful as the material seems to merit. Part of this is due to just how long it takes to unravel the plot, with constant temporal shifts in perspective from the early '50s to the late '80s that leave much confusion as to which characters belong where for the first section of the film. As a more serious criticism, the story is jammed with so many subplots that it threatens to sink under its own weight, interweaving the central story with digressions into Hitchcock's filming of I Confess in Quebec; the brother's simultaneous entanglements with an ex-wife, a customer he services as a mail prostitute, and murky ventures into criminal activity; and main character Lothaire Bluteau's bumbling attempts to conduct his investigation while holding onto his mundane hotel job. Though there's a high level of craft in the cinematography, director Robert Lepage arguably over-spices the broth with arty shots that don't mean a whole lot, particularly of both fish and humans in water. The scenario is complex enough, and the denouement surprising enough, to hold your attention. But there are too many fleeting shifts between characters to engage with them, which makes the revelations about family history, sexual infidelities, and the cyclical pattern of repeating similar mistakes in different generations less shocking than they could have been.