Marécages/ Written and Directed by Guy Edoin - A short country parable


As few people would ever know about the works of Victor Lévy-Beaulieu, well this movie will probably remind some of you of his homespun novels about the toilers of the soil : L'Héritage, and Bouscotte. And when I mean by toilers of the soil, it's actually farmers and their farm life. It's a whole life of turmoil that's being developped for us, taking the center stage, in this short parable of the country side, portraying it in sharp and stark intensity.

The screenwriting process seemed rather bizarre, although it does reflect a plot that could make you think about a novel of Victor Lévy-Beaulieu. Farmers who are a couple Jean and Marie, played by Pascale Bussières and Luc Picard, live the day-to-day trials on a milking farm. They have an only son, who at often times, is very irascible and detestable Simon, portrayed by a young Gabriel Maillé. It's a tragedy, in the event of the loss of the father, when a tractor crushes his chest, pinning him to the ground in agony, unable to be revive to health in time when an ambulance brings him to the nearest hospital. The mother, Marie becomes completely enraged with grief, blaming the death on Simon, because he hasn't secured the wheels of the tractors, while his father was doing mechanic work under it. During the mourning of Jean, Marie starts to get sligthly enamoured with a farm hand Pierre, interpreted by François Papineau. The ending is rather bizarre, because it gave me the impression that it finished right in it's middle, and to tell you the truth, I felt quite robbed. It really has the most anticlimatic ending, which is ever to be commited to Quebec cinema.    

The direction is extremely tight, giving a climate of starkness often attributed to the sort of emotional undertones, that would derive from Ingmar Bergman or evenly from Robert Bresson, if you can only see the pictures L'Argent, and Pickpocket in order to compare. Also, you can happen to find that the film contains an ensemble lot of long contemplative sequences, that could much derive from the directing work of another Canadian filmaker, Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, more specifically Les Maudits Sauvages. But Édoin tries to make a style that his completely his own style, and succeeds at it.

The characters of the film, all bring out what is the core beastiality of the wildness of man, which centers on farm living. François Papineau portrays with every persuasion possible, the brutish personnality of a farmer who enters in a couple's life, falling in love with Marie, played by Pascal Bussières in probably one of the greatest perfomances I've seen from her in long time. Simon, played by Gabriel Maillée, has a performance that is nothing short of brillant, in all his attempts to be excruciatingly detestable for the viewer. He simply intrudes himself into their lives, almost to the point of blatant opportunism. Finally, he sets himself in by being the widowed mother's farm hand, and gathers rather gradually their trust. In a drunken fit of libido, he rapes Marie in the car, while being both drunk, coming home from a big town fair. 

This film, even in it's seldom carnality, wants to bind you to the misery of the soil, however how succinct the story might be.

A good film, nonetheless.

3.5*/5

M.L

- October 15th, 2011

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