Rimbaud sung by Charlebois, a painting by Caravaggio, quotes from Spinoza… and Michel Sardou: I loved all the winks in the film Just like Sylvain by Monia Chokri.
• Also read – Magalie Lépine-Blondeau and Monia Chokri: “There was a kind of symbiosis between us”
I laughed out loud at the hilarious dialogue of this romantic comedy, which opened Friday, and enjoyed its philosophical questions, from Plato to Schopenhauer.
It feels good: It’s been a while since I (really) liked a Quebec film…
Just like cinema
This brilliant film, without ever falling into clichés, tells a love (and sex) story between a philosophy teacher and a “construction man”.
My toes were curled with happiness! I saw allusions to Claude Sautet there: characters caught in a downpour and taking refuge under a veranda; Magalie Lépine Blondeau, who looks like Romy Schneider; a loving trio that has a bit of César and Rosalie.
I thought Monia Chokri had guts. It takes 2023 to show a woman who loves to have fun with a manly, wooden guy because she gets bored in bed with her pink man who serves as her partner.
Good feelings and “deconstructed” men have never wet a woman’s panties!
In his study of “class struggle,” Chokri takes a critical (and amused) look at both the intellectuals who distance themselves from their speech and actions and the “ordinary people” who lack the words to express their thoughts.
I’m very happy that many of you saw the two summer films, My Mother’s Men ($1.6 million at the box office) and Time for a Summer ($2 million).
However, both of these films suffer from plot plausibility issues.
In My Mother’s Men, didn’t you start laughing when the spurned lover says his father intercepted his letters? We’re not in Downtown Abbey! A bundle of letters with a bow on top is something we’ve seen a thousand times in the cinema in films set in Victorian England. But not in Quebec in the 21st century! Millennials send each other letters?
In Le Temps d’un été, did you really believe in this human “Noah’s Ark” that “fulfills all the criteria”: an indigenous woman, a transgender woman, a young person from the DPJ, an alcoholic, a drug addict?
Seriously, did you think that Josée Deschênes could fall madly in love with dirty Guy Nadon, who walks around in tramp clothes?
Sophie Dupuis’ film “Solo” also contains some implausibility: a drag show in which the audience stands up and raises their arms to protest against homophobia? A singer who has no idea what happened to her own children after fifteen years away while we live in the age of social media?
• Also read – “Simple as Sylvain”: a mature, sophisticated and very successful romantic comedy
We raise the bar
I like well-written films with concise lines.
That’s why I loved Monia Chokri’s film. And that’s why I can’t wait to see Testament, the next Denys Arcand.
There’s nothing I hate more than saying after a film, “Ugh, that’s not bad… for a Quebec film.” We should never be satisfied with our own cinematography!
