Joual Amour

Beaux jeudis du cinéma : Route 132 

le 13 janvier 2011, 19h 30.

Auditorium Jules-Verne, 5445 Baillie Street, Vancouver

Version originale en français

Durée 1h53

Genre Drame

Origine Québec

Date de sortie au Québec 6 octobre 2010

Date de sortie du DVD 18 janvier 2011

Synopsis

Incapable de faire le deuil de la mort de son fils, Gilles décide de s’enfuir vers le Bas-Saint-Laurent avec un ancien ami devenu petit criminel, Bob. Sans argent, les deux hommes doivent dévaliser le guichet automatique d’un petit village, mais sont volés à leur tour. Tandis que Bob fait la rencontre d’une femme de qui il tombe instantanément amoureux, Gilles vit avec le fardeau de sa culpabilité. Le deuil est difficile à faire. De passage chez une tante, il se remémore avec elle sa jeunesse passée près du Saint-Laurent.

Synopsis © Cinoche.com

Acteurs

• François Papineau
• Alexis Martin
• Sophie Bourgeois
• Alice Morel-Michaud
• Bobby Beshro
• Andrée Lachapelle
• Benoît McGinnis
• Gary Boudreault
• Sonia Vignault
• Francesca Barcenas
• Janine Sutto
• Denise Gagnon
• Gaston Caron
• Guillaume Chouinard
• Clémence Desrochers

Réalisateur

• Louis Bélanger

Scénaristes

• Louis Bélanger
• Alexis Martin

Studio de production

• Aetios Productions
• Cinémaginaire inc.

Distributeur au Québec

• Alliance Vivafilm

Liens

• Fiche RCQ
• Fiche IMDb

Veteran director Louis Bélanger, one of Quebec’s most consistently intriguing filmmakers (best known in English Canada for Post Mortem and Gas Bar Blues), returns to the Festival with Route 132, a powerful and affecting examination of grief and rebirth. After a tragic and devastating loss, middle- aged professor Gilles runs into Bob, a childhood friend who now hustles sketchy goods for a living and sometimes commits small-time crimes. Bob and Gilles get to talking and consuming large quantities of beer. Soon enough, Bob convinces the near suicidal Gilles to head to the countryside to rob a bank. Unable to cope, Gilles agrees and embarks on a journey through rural Quebec which, perhaps inadvertently, becomes a journey through his and his family’s past. The seminal films of Québécois cinema have generally considered the country as both real and metaphorical, but Gilles and Bob’s odyssey is far more literal than figurative. And loss and grief are common experiences. At a seniors’ home, Bob winds up in a violent dispute with an orderly who seems unconcerned that his charges are living in unsafe and humiliating conditions. There’s also a strange encounter with a group of former soldiers, who are in the midst of commemorating the suffering they’ve encountered in their travels. (Their tribute bears an eerie resemblance to the whale hunt in Pierre Perrault and Michel Brault’s classic Pour la suite de monde.) Bélanger both critiques and celebrates the traditional valourization of the countryside in Québécois society (and cinema) while pointing out that the old rural Quebec is now a myth, a thing of the past. The soldiers that he and Bob encounter are nothing if not global citizens. As the film proceeds, it becomes clear that Gilles and Bob’s opportunities for redemption and rebirth lie less in the past than within themselves. With Route132, Bélanger again shows us why he’s one of Quebec’s most respected filmmakers.

-Steve Gravestock