2003 - Dir: Jean-François Pouliot - 1 hour 44 minutes - Canada
Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on 13th February, 2015
We ended our small cinema’s 2014 showings in November with “Calvary” which was billed as a “black comedy”. Many of us struggled to find the comedy. We’re glad to say that tonight’s film is an out and out comedy. It’s supposed to be funny and nobody gets their brains blown out. Brendon Gleeson, the owner of the splattered brains, is not in this film - but he is in the less successful 2013 re-make. We gather that nothing was changed apart from the plot, the location, the title and the language spoken…
The decline of traditional industries and changes in ways of working have caused problems for ordinary folk the world over. The Canadian fishing industry, though in good health overall, has changed. It’s no longer viable for small communities, with poor communications with the large centres of population, to compete with conglomerates with factory sized boats and industrial scale processing plants. This is the background to the plight of Ste-Marie-la-Mauderne on the north coast of Quebec - where things have got so bad that every single inhabitant is claiming welfare. Small wonder that they grasp at the opportunity of a new source of employment with such vigour and ingenuity…
This is an old fashioned little film. The plot is barely believable as some of the more pedantic critics have hastened to point out. It’s a bit of whimsy - comparable to Passport to Pimlico or perhaps Waking Ned - both equally unbelievable but both equally charming.
The Film was made in Harrington Harbour on the coast of Northern Quebec. Although life in the area is undoubtedly hard, the citizens are adamant that their fishing industry is healthy, their town is prosperous and a plastics factory is not on their list of “must haves”. They were not impressed when the film company made their tidy little town look run down and dirty.
None of the “stars” are well known outside their home territory of the province of Quebec but they’re all regulars on Quebec’s many TV channels. Raymond Bouchard and Lucie Laurier each have film careers spanning 30 years. The endearing and cheeky acting ensemble works hard, and Ken Scott's script (his first) finds ways of wringing irreverence from the apparent good nature of the situation, flipping cynicism and urban snobbery on their heads by conjuring a romantic view of hamlet life.
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