Cinema Canada (May 1980)

Mary Stephen’s favorite photographer, John Cressey, catches her in a pensive mood. émigré world of Indochina, it is a poetic story, in the spirit of Marguerite Duras, about the love and separation of two women. All “silk, satins and sensuality,” says Derek Hill of Essential Cinema in London (which has picked up the film for redistribution). “It is one of the most erotic films I have seen for a long time.” French audiences and critics were impressed. In Le Figaro, critic Michel Marmin called it “un film précieux comme une photographie décolorée dont les mystéres nous seraient délicatement dévoilés.” Claire Clouzot, in her lengthy review for Le Matin, called on India Song and Hiroshima Mon Amour for comparisons, and encouraged people to see the film if they “aiment a réver sur des glissements de satin, des ombres de soie, et des ongles laqués de carmin, cependant qu'un gramophone égréne dans la piéce aux cent mille miroirs quelque chanson rauque, sensuelle et démodée...” Stephen was a bit surprised. “I didn’t expect it to be so successful with audiences. I wanted to make the film because that period fascinates me. It was dreamy, romantic and sensual; the last age of innocence, a voluptuous world unaware of what was going to happen shortly. | suppose it is a “French” film because it is sensitive to the subtleties of film language. But I didn’t imagine that people here would like it as much as they did.” An encouraging response to a first feature, Stephen assumed Shades of Silk would become something of a key to Canadian and French financing for Night Fires — a film specifically intended as a largebudget commercial venture. It didn’t; somebody changed the lock guarding Canadian investors. “Commer cial” has come to mean something quite specific in Canada. Perhaps it is closest to Richard Norton’s script of Sweet Justice, which, as reported in the press, “was ‘chosen out of twenty scripts examined by Norton for its mix of action and adventure, a combination he personally favours.” Certainly a commercial, Canadian film should avoid what producer Robert Lantos (In Praise of Older Women and Agency) calls “the presumptuousness of the exercise of aesthetic masturbation.” Roy Birkett, a broker with Mead and Co., agrees, and said in a recent interview that he warns film investors to “buy junk films because they sell.” Since Stephen frequently talks about “artistic integrity,” and her interest in French film styles, she presumably fits into the ‘presumptuous aesthete’ category. Her approach to film emphasizes different values. As John Cressey put it one afternoon, just after returning to Paris from Cannes, “When we make a film ‘it is something we believe in, and naturally it will reflect that in devotion, care and energy.” Besides, Stephen writes scripts that deal with broad human issues, such as, “a man in search of the Absolute, not knowing whether it exists... only blindly hoping that it does.” Night Fires or A Slender’ Thread of Passion is still in the works. In the meantime, Stephen has been busy. While John Cressey crossed the Atlantic seeking backers, Stephen finished the script for a second feature film. In this film, she imagines an Alan Bates character as a self-exiled hermit. He stumbles into a deserted village in Normandy, where he meets a fifteen-year-old Parisian girl who has run away,’ from a young love, to her mother’s deserted country house in the same village. He falls in love with her, but eventually realizes that little has changed in the world he left twenty-six years earlier. Then came Justocoeur and a small Canada Council grant. Justocoeur “is very different from Shades of Silk,” says Stephen. “It is much colder in a lot of ways (partly because it is shot in Fuji colour which is flatter than Kodak), except for the music. Composed by Guem, one of the best African percussionists in France, the music is hot stuff!” There is also the added titillation of a cameo appearance by the well-known actress / daughter of a certain Canadian diplomat. Naturally, Stephen is excited about this small film. But she is still waiting for that major feature. A lot of people, in Paris at least, feel it won’t be long now. Boyd Neil Cinema Canada/29