Denys Arcand

Quote:
If you ever wanted to understand the debate about the independence of Québec, this is likely the best documentary made on the subject. Sadly, it comes without subtitle. A few may find it somewhat demagogical… it mostly is once it enter the popular opinion, the average man take on it. But the politicians are also abhorrent and you hear it loud and clear. Those against it are very vocal, screaming anger and anguish, always yelling. Using the same scare tactics that always are used to defeat the opposition. Showing it to be dangerous, irrealistic, etc. Even, as a testament to how little have changed, taking the oil price as a measure of achievement, saying Canada have it the cheapest and that the independence of Québec would double it’s price.Read More »

After a raucous visit from the wealthy Uncle Arthur (The Death of a Lumberjack’s J. Léo Gagnon), working class Montreal couple Roland (O.K. … Laliberté’s René Caron) and Berthe (Mustang’s Luce Guilbeault) are left feeling slighted by his meager gift of $500. Hungry for more, Berthe hatches a plan to descend on Uncle Arthur’s remote country house and steal his small fortune with the help of her delinquent brother and cousin. When the robbery spirals out of control, allegiances shift, blood is spilled, and Roland’s dimwitted lodger Ernest (J.A. Martin Photographer’s Marcel Sabourin) takes center stage in a harrowing battle for Arthur’s stolen cash.Read More »

Quote:
September 1961. It’s the start of a new academic year at the Université de Montréal. Nicole meets Pierre, a sophomore who shows her how to succeed in her courses without attending them. Marie-Josée tells her about her unhappy love affair and warns her to beware of men. Carl, a conceited young man, offers her a tour of the city. The film follows Nicole in a lecture on sexuality, and a show of the Cyniques (a famous 60s group of humorists). With Pierre, she takes part in a boozy initiation, and the romance culminates in an endless series of kisses that goes on until the first snow.Read More »

Quote:
Gina (Céline Lomez), a Montreal striptease dancer, is sent by her agency to small-town Louisville to give a show at a local hotel. Also arriving in Louisville that same day are Bob Sauvageau (Claude Blanchard), leader of a gang of snowmobilers known as “Les Pinguins,” and a director (Gabriel Arcand) and a small crew of filmmakers from the Office National du Cinéma who are making a film on the oppressive working conditions at the local textile factory (a reference to Arcand’s own NFB-banned documentary On est au coton). The friendly relationship that is established between Gina and the filmmakers upsets the snowmobilers, while the filmmakers, having persuaded the manager of the factory to allow them to film, are discovering a long history of alienation and submission among the workers.Read More »

Set in a dreary urban landscape of Edmonton, LOVE AND HUMAN REMAINS is a dark comedy about a group of twentysomethings looking for love and meaning in the ’90s. The film focuses on roommates David, a gay waiter who has has given up on his acting career, and Candy, a book reviewer who is also David’s ex-lover. David and Candy’s lives are entangled with those of David’s friends (a busboy, a psychic dominatrix, and a misogynistic civil-servant) and Candy’s dates (a male bartender and a lesbian schoolteacher). Meanwhile, a serial killer menaces the concrete and asphalt neighbourhood in which David and Candy live.Read More »

Quote:
One of the most controversial films in Canadian history, On est au coton is an examination of the exploitation and repression of textile workers in Quebec. This National Film Board production, more social inquiry than documentary, contrasts the lives of textile workers and their bosses and places their situation in an historical context by employing footage from old films about the industry. (The title is a pun which literally means “we are in cotton,” but it also connotes “we are fed up.”)Read More »

Quote:
Sexual revelations emerge when a group of academics and their partners spend a weekend at a country retreat.

Roger Ebert wrote:
Here is a movie where everybody talks about nothing but sex, and the real subject is wit. The movie takes place during a little more than 24 hours in the lives of some friends, who either work in the history department of a Canadian university, or sleep with people who do. They meet for dinner, and as they prepare and eat the food and drink the wine, they talk and talk about sex. But if you listen carefully, you will find that their real subject is not sex, but verbal cleverness, and that their real passion comes in the area of intellectual competition.Read More »

From the Film Reference Library:
One of the most controversial films in Canadian history, On est au coton is an examination of the exploitation and repression of textile workers in Quebec. This National Film Board production, more social inquiry than documentary, contrasts the lives of textile workers and their bosses and places their situation in an historical context by employing footage from old films about the industry. (The title is a pun which literally means “we are in cotton,” but it also connotes “we are fed up.”)Read More »