The Quebec of ignorance The Montreal Journal Inside Will by Denys Arcand, which opens in theaters on October 5, Rémy Girard’s character tells what he did during his day: “I took a walk through the cemetery, I watched an insignificant Quebec film.”
I laughed so hard at the movie premiere that I think I punctured the eardrum of the Radio-Canada cultural columnist sitting to my right.
I laughed because Arcand seemed quite shameless to me to scratch some colleagues like that.
But I also laughed, because I’ve seen insignificant Quebec films many times!
Photo Agency QMI, Martin Alarie
REALITY VS FICTION
“Insignificant: lacking meaning, meaning.”
Sense, Will has. A lot, even.
The funniest scene takes place during a literary awards ceremony to which the character played by Rémy Girard is invited, in the presence of the Minister of Inculture, sorry, of Culture.
All awards are given to women (or people with uteruses, as they say in hipster circles) of minority groups or gender identities.
As they get up to collect their trophy, Rémy Girard, a white, heterosexual, cisgender man in his 50s, is literally pushed down and run over.
Arcand turns this scene into a Fellinian farce. Exaggerated, grotesque. However, it is disturbingly true.
Reread my columns from the last two years: how many funding agency programs are reserved for “racialized people”, indigenous peoples, LGBTQ2SAI+? Dozens!
In this memorable scene, an award is presented to Rémy Girard’s character, whose name is Jean-Michel Bouchard, who has been confused with the excellent playwright Michel-Marc Bouchard (The Feluettes, the orphan muses).
You will tell me: “Come on, Sophie, it is impossible for a Minister of Culture in Quebec not to know how to recognize the playwright whose works are performed on all international stages! “.
However, we have already seen a Minister of Culture who did not even know André Brassard!
When a nursing home gets rid of its books and replaces them with video games, Rémy Girard asks why we don’t give them away instead of throwing them in the trash. “Nobody wants it,” Sophie Lorain responded. It is to cry.
When the Minister of Health (played by Caroline Néron) brags about loving culture, she says that when her friends come to eat at her house, they can see the Cornos “decorating” her walls. I like Corno, but it’s not Riopelle, damn it!
Yves Jacques and Robert Lepage say it well in the film: “The only culture politicians know is Cirque du Soleil. And Celine Dion. That’s all. That’s absolutely all. All. »
FAKE NEWS!
What Arcand says about Quebec culture is both lucid… and heartbreaking. Hilarious… and sad.
The only “lack of realism” of WillThis is the recording scene of a literary magazine on public television.
This is false, Mr. Arcand! Neither Radio-Canada nor Télé-Québec deign to offer reading Quebecers a program worthy of the name.
The other day, a Montreal bookseller I was browsing with reported this scandal. His clients now listen religiously to the French show The great bookstore.
And who was Augustin Trapenard’s guest on September 13? The Quebec author Éric Chacour, who presented his first novel, what i know about you.
What we know about you, Quebec, is that you don’t know your own culture.
