It comes as little surprise to learn that Louis Godbout once made his living as a philosophy professor — not after watching how thoroughly his new film , The Parking Spot , toys with the mind.

The film takes a seemingly mundane event — an argument over a parking spot in suburban Montreal — and turns it into both a psychological war between its central characters and an existential crisis within each of them.

Godbout plainly delights in life’s many uncertainties, and has found in film an ideal medium for exploring them.

“Philosophy is a training in seeing that what appears simple and unproblematic in everyday life is not really so; that most things are problematic as soon as you scratch the surface a little bit,” the Canadian filmmaker explains. “Philosophers thrive on problems and ambiguity and uncertainty, and I like films that also do that.”

So The Parking Spot (Primatice Films) deliberately leaves some questions — and even the nature of certain characters — wide open to interpretation.…