Once upon a time in Quebec
It was the Quiet Revolution that allowed Quebec cinema to really take off. Pour la suite du monde (1963), co-directed by Pierre Perrault and Michel Brault, among others, two great names in local cinema, attempts to revive, in a fiction-like documentary, a bygone Isle-aux-Coudres tradition: porpoise hunting. The film displays two traits typical of Quebec cinema at the time: an ethnographic sensibility and the desire to preserve a culture threatened with extinction, which is echoed in another pioneering film, Claude Jutra's Mon oncle Antoine (1970), a portrait of a teenager and the daily life of a small, remote mining town in the 1940s - Thetford Mines - that began a rich tradition of initiation stories. Brault's Les Ordres (1974) tackles head-on the October Crisis, the unlawful imprisonment of several hundred Quebecers in a region where the army was dispatched at the time, and signs one of the jewels in the crown of the political film, somewhere between fiction and documentary, an alloy prized by Quebec filmmakers. In the 1960s, another key figure, Gilles Carle, embarked on a prolific career with La Vie heureuse de Léopold Z (1965), a rare vision of snowy Montreal. It was he who revealed one of the first stars of Quebec cinema, Carole Laure, in La Mort d'un bûcheron (1973) or Les Corps célestes (1973), which presents the daily life of a brothel in a small town in northern Quebec - for the record, he also gave one of her first roles to Susan Sarandon(Fleur bleue, 1971). His films, notably La Vraie nature de Bernadette (1972), which showcases the beauty of the Quebec countryside, are permeated by the libertarian and hippie spirit of the time, which left a lasting mark on a Quebec where the separation of church and state had only just begun, making it the outpost of a certain progressivism. At the same time, a wave of erotic films was a less artistic manifestation. J.A. Martin photographe (Jean Beaudin, 1977), in which a couple try to save their marriage during an excursion into the 19th-century Canadian countryside, won Monique Mercure the Best Actress award at Cannes, and Mourir à Tue-Tête (Anne Claire Poirier, 1979), a hard-hitting film about violence against women, also gave pride of place to female roles.
A golden age?
The following decade was a particularly fruitful one for Quebec cinema: Denys Arcand enjoyed his first successes at home, before reaching an international audience with Le Déclin de l'empire américain (1986), whose sequel, Les Invasions barbares, almost twenty years later, revealed Marie-Josée Croze to French audiences. The last film in the trilogy, L'Âge des ténèbres (2007), was poorly received by critics, although it was a box-office success in Quebec. Les Bons Débarras (Francis Mankiewicz, 1980), set against the backdrop of the Laurentian mountains, and Léolo (Jean-Claude Lauzon, 1992), in which a child from the working-class suburbs of 1950s Montreal uses dreams to escape, confirm the predilection of Quebec filmmakers for tales of learning. Aimed at a more childlike audience, La Guerre des tuques (1984), filmed largely in Baie-Saint-Paul, is a classic of popular Quebec family cinema. Together with Les Plouffe (Gilles Carle, 1981), an adaptation of a famous novel and an amiable satire of the lives of the little people in Quebec City's Lower Town in the 1940s, it is proof that a cinema that is at once mainstream, diligent and generous has emerged. Other highlights of this extremely fruitful period include Un zoo la nuit (Jean-Claude Lauzon, 1987), a melancholy stroll through nocturnal Montreal, and Jésus de Montréal (Denys Arcand, 1989), which offers a view of the city from the top of the steps leading to St. Joseph's Oratory. The identity crisis of Quebecers, attracted by America, finds a comic incarnation in Elvis Gratton: the King of Kings (Pierre Falardeau, 1985), whose character has become part of popular heritage.
Between standardization and singularity: a cinema that is still flourishing
The 1990s saw something of a lull before Quebec cinema made a comeback at the turn of the century. The year of the second referendum on Quebec independence saw the release of Eldorado (Charles Binamé, 1995), a snapshot of Montreal youth and nightlife in the 1990s. Le Violon rouge (François Girard, 1998) and its international cast are the sign of a cinema that is gradually opening up to the world, starting with the rest of Canada. Some directors, embracing their dual cultures, demonstrate Hollywood-like efficiency while taking care to preserve Quebecois particularities. La Grande Séduction (Jean-François Pouliot, 2003), which takes up the motif of a small, remote community, was a great success before being the subject of multiple remakes (one of which was directed by Don McKellar, the co-writer of... The Red Violin), boosting tourism in the village of Harrington Harbour where it was filmed and throughout the Lower North Shore. C.R.AZ.Y. (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2005), a generational portrait and rock anthem to difference, confirmed this new trend in Quebec cinema, as did Starbuck (Ken Scott, 2011), inspired by a humorous news item - a man learns that he is the father of several hundred children - which has been remade three times, including in France. Bon Cop, Bad Cop (Érik Canuel, 2006), a totally bilingual film designed to unite Quebec and the rest of Canada through its duo of cops, became the biggest hit in Canadian film history in 2006, as it was intended to do. A sequel, Bon Cop, Bad Cop 2, released in theaters in 2017, was less successful than the first film.
However, a more radical or austere cinema continues to assert itself in the person of Denis Villeneuve, author of Polytechnique (2009) orIncendies (2010) before yielding to the sirens of Hollywood, notably with a new adaptation of Dune (2021 and 2024), or Xavier Dolan, whose films have met with considerable acclaim in France since J'ai tué ma mère (2009) and Les Amours imaginaires (2010) - shot in Mile End - and whose cinematography suits the young, vibrant city of Montreal. In between, there are directors who specialize in warm, humanist cinema, such as Louis Bélanger with Gaz Bar Blues (2003), a chronicle of life around a gas station and its kind-hearted owner, or more recently Les Mauvaises herbes (2017), whose title refers to cannabis and which cheerfully mixes tones, at once hilarious and poignant. Another success is Monsieur Lazhar (Philippe Falardeau, 2013), about an immigrant teacher of Algerian origin living under the threat of deportation. History and geography buffs will turn to 15 février 1839 (Pierre Falardeau, 2001), about the Patriotes rebellion, or Ce qu'il faut pour vivre (Benoît Pilon, 2008), about an uprooted Inuit in Quebec City, showing the abyss that separates him from his culture and people. As we've seen, the province has a prodigious vitality, as reflected in its young, cosmopolitan population and effervescent Montreal art scene, as well as an unprecedented influence, through the films it produces every year, and the directors and actors who have exported themselves to Hollywood or France. Recently, Félix et Meira (Maxime Giroux, 2014) organized the unlikely encounter in the Mile End district, once again, of a Hasidic Jewess and an idle young man in a kind of wispy, melancholy romantic comedy that was not without its seductive appeal. Monia Chokri's La Femme de mon frère (2019) is one of the latest brilliant comedies to come out of Quebec, taking us, winter and summer, on skates and in a rowboat, on Beaver Lake in Montreal's Parc du Mont-Royal. Xavier Dolan's Matthias & Maxime (2010) crowns a particularly productive decade for this young director, during which he has made a whopping eight films that showcase his edgy romanticism and taste for melodrama, of which Mommy (2014) is the emotional peak.
Denis Villeneuve's Dune, an adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel, will be released in Quebec in October 2021 (a second part was released in 2024 and a third is planned for the coming years), as well as Monia Chokri's Simple comme Sylvain, which won the César for Best Foreign Film in 2024.
Quebec audiences have always been fond of TV series, but the format has experienced a boom that can be roughly traced back to Invincibles (2005-2009), a series about three thirty-somethings who decide to leave their girlfriends at the same time (the series was adapted for French audiences). Its creators have again distinguished themselves with Série noire (2014-2016), which revisits the detective story with irony, and most recently with C'est comme ça que je t'aime (2020 to present), the story of two couples in crisis who become the heads of organized crime in Quebec City. From courtroom drama(Ruptures, 2016-2019), through quality police series(19-2, 2011-2015 or District 31, 2016-2022), sometimes tinged with dark humor(Faits Divers, 2017-2018, set in the small town of Mascouche on the outskirts of Montreal), to the eternal mid-life crisis, this time a female version(Lâcher prise, 2017-2019), there's something for everyone.
