Cinema Canada (Jan-Feb 1981)

IN PROGRES... Life on the inside is a black reflection of life on the outside for prisoners (left to right) Lenore Zann, Louise Marleau and Alberta Watson. Black Mirror In the 1840's, La Petite Bastille, Quebec City’s prison overlooking the Plains of Abraham, was a wonder of modern penal reform. It was the first prison to employ a tiered system of cells, facilitating heating and keeping tuberculosis at bay. Today, at three p.m., the solitary cells face rows of tables with brightly checkered cloths and bottles of good wine. Places are set with antipasta and wicker baskets of fresh _ bread. A white-hatted chef stands to the rear, behind the buffet. No, this is not another sandblasted restaurant with a gimmick. It's lunchtime on the set of Black Mirror. Mirada Productions has occupied the prison. Editing facilities are just to the right of the main entrance, and the production office is upstairs. On his way from the set in the old courtyard commons below, the tuqued, down-vested régisseur bounds up the stairs two at a time to confer with production manager Sylvie de Grandpré. As yet, there is no publicist, and associate producer Pierre Caro (producer of Borsalino, and Le vieux fusil), disseminates project information with great selectivity. Describing the budget as “Two million...and a bit”, he acknowledges that there are no internationally known 2/January—February 1981 stars in the picture. Of the three female leads only Louise Marleau is a veteran, and ‘her following is mainly drawn from Quebec audiences. Alberta Watson from Toronto is in her first major feature role (she appeared in In Praise of Older Women), and newcomer Lenore Zann has just finished commuting between this ’ set and Montreal to finish Filmplan’s The Fright. Despite the lack of “stars”, this is hardly a “no frills’ production. “To have one Faye Dunaway just for the investors”, says Caro, “would create an.imbalance. Jean Genét is the missing star.” Black Mirror's screenplay, adapted from Genét’s play Haute surveillance, has undergone star treatment. Director Pierre Alain Jolivet collaborated on the first screenplay adaptations with Genét himself, and. also with Jean-Claude Carriére (a French writer who has worked with Luis Bunuel for the last ten years, and who wrote Milos Forman’s latest film, Taking Off. He also wrote the screenplay for The Tin Drum which won the Golden Palm Award at Cannes last year.) Arthur Samuels, who has had the difficult job of turning the French script into a workable English screenplay, remains on set as dialogue coach. The story is full of vision and allegory; everything that happens inside the women’s prison is a parallel of life on the “outside”. The plot centers around four women who have all spent different lengths of time inside. They hear on the radio of a bizarre murder, and devise a dangerous game: a tag of sorts, where whoever becomes “it” must kill a fellow prisoner. When the young Julie (Zann) is declared “it”, and refuses to take part, her fellow prisoners force her into it. One crew member remarks that there is a fascinating visual irony to the film. “There are all these gorgeous women, lit as if they’re in a soap commercial, doing horrible things to each other.” It has taken director Jolivet two years to bring this project to fruition. Probably the most difficult task was wooing the reclusive Genét, now 72 and suffering from throat cancer, into giving him the property rights. Fifteen years ago, Genét had sold the rights for The Balcony toa U.S.