Cinema Canada (Apr-May 1974)

only to return to her children. student work Seul ou avec d’autres, Rejeanne Padovani (played with quiet and controlled desperation by Luce Guilbault) is, in fact, the one character touched with any warmth. As mother of Vincent’s two children, she is the only life force in a world otherwise characterized by coldness and death. Significantly, when she returns to Padovani’s estate, she hides in the greenhouse, negotiating with her ex-husband through his thugs. Wanting simply to be a mother again, she promises to stay as much as possible out of Padovani’s way. But as she finds out, his world demands complete loyalty, a commitment which she forsook in favour of another man. Padovani’s thugs make sure that she will never betray him again. Not an appealing lot then, and Arcand uses them to striking advantage, offsetting to a degree, the rather stagey way in which he has put the film together. By keeping the dramatic unities of time and place within reason, as the evening of wine, women and song unfolds, Arcand has inadvertently given the film something of the character of a “drawing room” play. It’s a calculated approach which makes the party a contrivance, not so much to honour Padovani’s guests as for the benefit of Arcand’s audience When, at the dinner Padovani’s lawyer rises to toast the mayor, the minister of highways, the minister’s personal secretary and their respective wives, he proceeds in effect to introduce them directly to the viewer. The question then becomes: how much more has been staged for our benefit? Although the pace is drawn out and the people deliberate in their thinking, the evening seems improbably eventful. Indeed, it’s easy to wonder how such an awful lot could be accomplished by such slow thinkers in so short a time. Perhaps though, this is just the kind of apparent contradiction that we’ve come to expect and accept from the world of politics. How could it help but also be evident in its reflected image? And, like the world of politics, Arcand’s film is interesting and often striking, even if its credibility is not always convincing. These days we’re entitled to be a bit skeptical of everything. — Mark Miller Réjeanne Padovani* The only Canadian film to cause any interesting reaction at Cannes in 1973, Denys Arcand’s Rejeanne Padovani, a tale of the ugly world of corruption in Quebec, was premiered for English Canadians at the Stratford Film Festival in 1973, has been highly popular in Quebec, but did not open in Toronto until February 1974. Still in his early thirties, Arcand has been making films since 1962 when his 76 Cinema Canada with Denis Héroux, and Michel Brault on camera, was completed. He is a committed Québécois whose _ other works include exposés of the colonialization of French Canada by the French, Champlain and Les Montréalistes (both 28 minutes, NFB), the unreleased, censored On est au coton (120 min. NFB) concerning the conditions of workers, and the film Québec — Duplessis et aprés among others. Unfortunately these are not seen in English Canada. The treatment of business and political corruption in Rejeanne Padovani takes one step further the subject of his previous film, La Maudite Galette, a bright super-B crime-and-consequences tale of personal greed and ill-gotten gains. As with most French Canadian films you can help yourself to the several possible layers of meaning in this story of the dinner party of contractor Padovani given to celebrate the opening of his newly constructed highway, and to thank his influential friends and connections, including the Mayor, for their part in awarding him the contract. There are two. significant intertuptions to the celebration, but both are carefully kept from disturbing the joyless flow of what must be one of the most lifeless parties ever. Padovani’s ex-wife Rejeanne arrives from the States and begs to see their children and return to Quebec to live, now that the young Jew she ran away with is dying of cancer, and some over-eager young journalists try to intrude, and foolishly disclose that a civic demonstration is planned for the highway opening. Rejeanne, who deserted Padovani and her children and joined the “rival powers” now is desperate to return. “Ah God,” she sighs, “I don’t want to speak English any more; I’m sick of living in the States.’’ But she never gets to see Padovani. She is forced to negotiate through an unsympathetic henchman, while Padovani sits brooding in his study, mulling the ‘“‘moral question” of her fate. As Padovani ponders, the parallel implication is that the The opening of the autoroute Québécois also ponder the fate of those who deserted to the ‘“‘American way” and now want to return. Fortunately the Guilbeault, remembered as the uncomfortable waitress-stripper in Le Temps d’un Chasse, practically the only one of her ten most recent films (including OK Laliberté and Francois Durocher, Waitress) seen in Toronto, is such a good actress that she manages to flesh out the part of Rejeanne and make her an interesting believable woman. Guilbeault herself isn’t so pleased with her performance. At the Stratford Film Festival she said “‘Arcand had _ too much confidence in me” and acknowledged that the tiny budget ($200,000) which permitted no rehearsal, no costumes, only one and two takes per scene in a brisk two and a half day shooting schedule, was very rough. While the fate of Rejeanne as a deserter is pondered heavily, the fate of the erstwhile demonstrators is taken care of briskly and brutally in the plot. The super-highway is opened the following day as planned, and the camera allows one sentimental moment as a lengthy shot pauses at the rows of half-houses and destroyed neighborhoods the construction has created. Everything is ugly. The little miserable men, their manipulations, their pathetic wives, their deals, their bodyguards, and their attitudes to life. And they live in ugly surroundings, unflatteringly photographed in _ their suburban milieu: the concrete-block rec room, the basement bar, the incredible tastelessness of the house, walls, drapes, lamps, fixtures and furniture. The kind of world they make and the means they use echo this. Despite an intentional dragging in the film, it moves steadily and pragmatically to its not necessarily inevitable end. Any politically-minded English-Canadian must wonder, where are our films like this? and wish we had a determined and talented group ready to use film this way. Certainly we’ve got the subject matter. actress Luce — Natalie Edwards Reprinted from Toronto Citizen