After trying and failing to watch the Jutras (Quebec's answer to the Oscars) a couple weeks ago (just too "French" for me, and by "French" I mean "lame"), we opted instead to rent some of the movies that were either nominated or had won in previous years. While compiling a list of our options we discovered that we had missed out on quite a few recent, good, Quebecois films, so we've got some work ahead of us.That night we rented Mémoires affectives (2004), Séraphin: un homme et son péché (2002) and the "classic" Quebecois comedy, Elvis Gratton (1981).
After staring at the screen in disbelief for the first 10 minutes of Elvis Gratton, I decided that I would rather watch "the one about the guy in the coma", so we popped in Mémoires affectives with former pretty-boy Roy Dupuis. In the 18 or so years since endearing himself to every pre-teen girl in Quebec with his role in the seminal tele-roman, Les Filles de Caleb, M. Dupuis has managed to develop into quite a talented actor and is easily one of the biggest stars in the province.The film opens with someone taking Alex (Dupuis) off of life support, but instead of just dying the act forces him out of the coma he has been in for the last 6 months. As a side effect of being in a coma for so long, Alex has almost complete amnesia and is therefor useless to the multiple police investigations he is involved with, the first pertaining to who tried to kill him in the hospital and the second being how he found himself in the coma in the first place.
His wife, Michelle (Nathalie Coupal), from whom he was estranged at the time of his accident; wants to pretend that everything is fine and that the years of trouble never happened. His daughter, Sylvaine (Karine Lagueux), is disgusted by what she perceives as her mother's hypocrisy, but she too struggles with what role she wants this man to play in her life. Alex, for his part, is more concerned with putting back together the pieces of his identity, even if the resulting picture is less than admirable.
I won't give away too much more of the plot as one the most engaging things about the film is trying to put together all the disparate memories and clues together along with Alex. We discover information at the same time as the character and because of Dupuis' touching performance we are usually as surprised and disappointed as he is when the information is negative. Unfortunately, the director introduces too many mysteries to properly resolve all of them at the end of the film, but this is far from a reason to avoid the film.
The film is similar in many ways to Memento in the way that it plays on our notions of memory and identity, but in many ways it is a much stronger film because it focuses more heavily on character development and setting. The acting is uniformly good, with Dupuis stealing the show with a nuanced and sympathetic portrayal of a man literally searching for himself. The cinematography is beautiful in that typically Canadian way and the choice to set the film in Baie St-Paul in the winter yields some spectacular shots.
Overall, Mémoires affectives (Looking for Alex in English) is a very strong Canadian film and while not perfect, it is definitely worth a look.
That Wednesday we rented the "controversial" Mon Fille, Mon Ange (My Daughter, My Angel). Promoted as a gritty look at the real world of online porn, the film is actually a Holywood-ized who-done-it melodrama, with some of Michel Côté's hammiest acting to date. And yes, that is saying something. Côté (who L. likes to call Quebec's answer to Al Pacino), plays Germain Degenais, a former lawyer now working for the office of a prominent cabinet minister in the Quebec legislature. His daughter, Nathalie (Karine Vanasse), has taken off to the big bad city of Montreal to attend university and unbeknownst to her parents, fallen in with the wrong crowd: namely, strippers and pornographers. While settling in to an evening of "working" alone in his study, Germain is shocked (shocked I say!) to discover his "ange" promoting herself on a porn site as "Samantha", the new girl. See, she's going to be poppin' her porno cherry live in 4 days, meaning Germain has only 4 days to get to Montreal, find, and save his little girl.
The film utilizes an interesting device of starting at the end, the result being one dead porno producer, and tracing things back through Germain's admission to a work colleague and Nathalie's interrogation by a police detective, played by Christian Begin. We don't actually know who killed the sleaze-bag and the film does a good job of conceiling the true killer right up until the end. Both Nathalie and Germain confess that the other has done a terrible thing, and its up to the audience to determine what is meant by their statements. Neither one is what the other believes them to be, Nathalie the perfect student is really Nathalie the backdoor slut and Germain's perfect political exterior covers some rather shocking rage issues; but does that make either one of them a killer?
The film is briskly paced at an hour and 25 minutes, so the audience is seldom bored. However, this doesn't leave much room for plausible character development and this is the film's greatest weakness. The exception is Laurence LeBeouf as Nathalie's childhood friend Angelique, who radiates with a primal energy in her portrayal of an almost middle-class girl in way over her head and she deservedly won this year's Jutra prize for breakout performance.
While entertaining enough, Mon fille, mon ange is a largely forgettable who done it and not really worth seeking out.
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