Cinema Canada (May-Jun 1975)

All this, and on a Day of Rest, no less. There must be a moral there... somewhere. —Mark Miller Gina It struck me that Les Ordres was such an interesting film because it managed to synthesize the aesthetic tendencies that have been developing in Québec cinema over the past decade. As a fictionalized account of a real event and given the expository framework within which Brault worked, it combined two key trends in Québécois cinéma — a propensity for the documentary which allows a fictional work to be rooted in a strong social and political reality. This tension exists in almost all of cinema, yet this familiarity with an environment has eluded English-Canadian filmmakers. Gina has a similar structure to the Brault film, although Arcand uses it in a more self-conscious manner. His film ties together two narrative threads. A film crew is shooting a film on the textile industry, and we see what they shoot — interviews and scenes inside the factories — as a film within a film. On the other level the crew is staying at a hotel where they meet Gina, a stripper, who is working the hotel for a couple of nights. This structure allows Arcand to develop certain ideas by having the two parts of the film play off against each other. It is fitting that this particular framework allows Arcand to look back at his first feature film — a documentary made for the NFB on the textile industry which is still unreleased although made in 1968 and 1969, On est au coton. Arcand is interested in different modes of exploitation, all of which are interdependent and finally embrasive. Within this dual structure Arcand places two people, both women, who reflect the differing components of the film. There is Gina, an outsider, a visitor, who is essentially rootless, a wanderer, exploiting her body as her job. On the other hand we have Dolorés, who is a worker in one of the factories visited by the film crew. She is the polar opposite of Gina — she looks old before her time, she is passive and submissive, yet kind and sympathetic — but essentially she has been ruthlessly exploited by an industry, and she is trapped within her life. One level of Gina exists almost on this level of an analysis of exploitation and the interesting paradoxes and contradictions that result. But perhaps more essentially we are shown a group of people who slowly and tentatively try to establish contact — one of the film crew is attracted to Gina, while the director of the film shows an interest in Dolorés. These relationships do not even reach a sexual level, they are played out by lonely people striving for warmth. The key moment of the film comes with Gina’s strip-tease where all the diverse elements of the film converge. It is indeed an incredible scene — a group of snowmobilers who live in an abandoned boat frozen into the ice, have come to leer and jeer at Gina; the film crew is there, with a tension already existing between these two very different groups. And finally the director has also brought Dolorés. The scene has been set with one of the most revealing moments of the film that is magical in its power and its implications. Dolorés and Gina are in the bathroom together — Gina preparing for her strip act and Dolorés combing her hair. Facing the mirror, side-by-side, Gina asks Dolorés in a completely emotionless voice how much she earns a week working at the factory. After telling her that she gets about $85 a week, Dolorés returns the question to Gina who replies that it varies but sometimes she earns as much as $400. Suddenly while the two are talking, we realise that they almost look alike — for this split-second. Separated totally as people in their lifestyles, their sudden resemblance is tragically stated. With the strip Gina exerts total power over her audience, especially the snowmobile gang. Yet after this, alone in her hotel room, Gina is brutally gang-raped by this same group. Enraged she phones the heavies who handle her act and releases a violent brutal climax to the film. Interestingly the film crew, throughout all this, is totally inactive and ineffective. Arcand cross-cuts the rape to the member of the film crew attracted to Gina, reading a book in bed. Next day he drops by to see her but any real form of contact has vanished. It is then that the film crew is recalled to Montréal, unable to finish their documentary. Having seen the snowmobile gang wiped out, Gina flies out of Montréal on holiday, while we see the film crew shooting a commercial police drama. In many respects Gina is also the flip-coin to Réjeanne Padovani. While Padovani explores the lifestyle of those who hold the power, Gina looks at those who are exploited by that power. And ultimately Arcand shows us that nothing changes, indeed most kinds of action, except those that are violent and essentially selfish, are ineffective. In the same cold and unemotional way that Padovani orders his wife killed, Gina obliterates the gang of snowmobilers. The difference is that in Padovani, the wife embodies certain human values, while Gina has no such equivalent force, except perhaps Dolorés. Patrick MacFadden once described Larry Kent’s High in Take One as a ‘bleak etching of a society deep in spiritual winter.” This comment can also be applied to Gina. But perhaps more disturbingly Arcand questions the role of the cinema in working for change. The last image of the crew, shooting a cop-film with Donald Pilon, (a swipe at The Collaborators) is of a lonely, lost, directionless group. If Arcand is pointing at a bankruptcy amongst the film community then the future does not augur well. — Piers Handling Orillia: Our Town Martin Lavut, sociologist? Yes, but with a sense of humour. His first film (reputed to be autobiographical), At Home, concerned a trivia maniac who wound up collecting people. Since then, Martin Lavut has directed shorts for series such as Of All People, numerous dramas which he describes as “‘atrocious; we wouldn’t want to mention those’, a recent one-hour CBC drama called Melony which was “almost detestable but at least it was my own script” and many commercials “which we do want to menGoons” Cinema Canada 61