Denys Arcand’s new film “Testament” was presented to media in Quebec on Monday morning. The great filmmaker of the films Réjeanne Padovani, The Decline of the American Empire and The Barbarian Invasions meets for the seventh time with his accomplice Rémy Girard. The actor plays Jean-Michel, a 70-year-old archivist who lives in a retirement home whose walls are decorated with a fresco described as racist by young protesters. The bar’s manager, Suzanne, who has a crush on her resident, is under pressure from activists, the media and the government.
The deadly question: What to do with the offending fresco? The search for a solution will be the pretext for a social x-ray in which Denys Arcand specializes.
“This is not an indictment of my time. It’s more like helplessness. For example, there are these people who arrive and say they represent the First Nations and have: “This painting is an insult to the First Nations,” explains the filmmaker during a press conference after the screening, accompanied by the film crew.
In this case, it was a similar matter that inspired Denys Arcand. A few years ago, after protests, the New York Museum of Natural History “changed” a diorama depicting the encounter between the Dutch and the Lenape: an attached glass plate now points out all the factual errors and all the prejudices conveyed by the work’s dating from 1939 .
“It is very well done,” notes Denys Arcand. The idea wasn’t to protest against it. »
Such a compromise is not achieved in the film, which is more interested, through satire, in what would happen in a context where panic would prevail.
“The solution to Sophie’s character [Lorain, qui joue Suzanne] is more radical… I said to myself that maybe we were moving towards a world where we would start to correct art in its entirety. The Sistine Chapel: Why is God an older white man? It could be an African woman. If we commit to this, where will we end up? We have already started correcting texts: James Bond, Harry Potter; no important texts. But what if we corrected Shakespeare? »
“It’s already done,” Sophie Lorain intervenes.
To summarize Denys Arcand: “It fills me with perplexity: like all old people, I wonder where we are going.” So that is my attitude. »
Creation of a key scene
This is also Jean-Michel’s attitude. To help Suzanne, he goes to Kahnawake. While waiting for an expert, he attends a game of lacrosse, a game he played in these very same locations as a teenager. So all these years later he had the reflex to consult someone on site about the delicate question of the fresco.
The Mohawk representative immediately comes to inspect the work. After the superficial accusations of the demonstrators at the beginning of the film, none of whom are local, this time we can expect a reading that is as profound as it is painful. She points to the spears of the Mohawks and the muskets of the French and explains what she sees in this fresco: the imminence of genocide.
It is the mohawk actress Alex Rice who carries this scene.
“I was so impressed by the script,” she admits. As an Indigenous artist…we don’t get many opportunities, and when we do get them, they are often inauthentic and disrespectful stereotyping […] With Denys, the material was so respectful… He knew what he was writing about: he had the names, he included our community… I felt like I could trust him that he didn’t intend to use me as… .accessory that he really wanted to see who I was and who we were. It was an opportunity to play as who I am and represent my community in a powerful and respectful way. »
To clarify Denys Arcand: “I had a Mohawk girlfriend when I was 21. She taught me everything that’s in the film. I just transcribed it. »
The filmmaker was also a lacrosse player himself: “When I was young, I played in Kahnawake and Akwesasne. It was part of my life as a teenager. And so I told myself that if I had the same problem as Sophie and Rémy’s characters, I would probably do that. And I would ask myself, “Who exactly are these protesters?” This is something that annoys me a little in life. Every time there are demonstrations of any kind – we don’t mention them by name so as not to get in the way, which is difficult in my case – I ask myself: “Who are these people?” »
Sub-question: Do these “people” have the legitimacy to speak out on behalf of the people affected by the issue being raised, or are they usurpers of causes?
” I don’t know it “
All this and many other things concern Jean-Michel, to whom Rémy Girard gives his facial features.
“Rémy is my spokesman, my alter ego,” notes Denys Arcand. He experiences what I experience in society, in the environment in which I find myself. Questions are omnipresent in our time. [Son personnage] expresses my dismay at the complexity of life. »
Rémy Girard, on the other hand, makes an important distinction regarding the director and screenwriter: “I often say in jest: “I act in French, in English and as Denys Arcand.” Since Denys is a language, it is a way of saying words speaking and thinking that I completely share. I feel completely at home there and also in the mirror that Denys holds up to us as a society. And Denys is an excellent dialogue writer: the words are effective, the lines are precise. »
Rémy is my spokesman, my alter ego. He experiences what I experience in society, in the environment in which I find myself. Questions are omnipresent in our time. [Son personnage] expresses my dismay at the complexity of life.
Identical story by Sophie Lorain, who found her character “wonderfully written.” “It was fun to play this ultimately controlling woman who spent her whole life trying to live up to people’s expectations, but it wasn’t always the picture of what she would have wanted or experienced. As she would have wished, who did that?” gets caught up in her dictates… and suddenly realizes that she is missing everything. It will open up to something else. »
According to Rémy Girard, Denys Arcand is a historian at heart. “A historian of the past, present and future. It has to be said that he predicted certain things in his films. »
In this context, Denys Arcand will discuss during the conference his 2007 film “The Age of Darkness”, in which he predicted the abolition of the use of two N-words, one referring to black people and the other to small people.
“Finally, in addition to the fate that should be reserved for the famous fresco, the will raises another pressing question: the career of its author. » Did he just perform his swansong?
“You can write your will before you die and change it later. If I were to make another film, I might call it Codicil. I always announce that it is my last film, but in reality I don’t know,” concludes Denys Arcand.
The film Testament opens on October 5th.