Die große Verführung

When was the last time that you went to see a comedy and actually laughed throughout the movie?

In this small traditional Quebec fishing port, dying in modern times, the townspeople must band together to "seduce" a doctor into signing a five-year contract. Their ability to do so will enable them to attract a factory to the town, providing jobs for everyone. The doctor they set their sights on is from The Big City, and of course all the townsfolk must collaborate to make their sad little town seem like paradise. The giant scheme leads to laugh after laugh. For fans of the show "Le Plateau" you will see all of your favorite characters.

Similar in theme (small town pulling the wool over outsiders eyes) as in the Irish flick "Waking Ned Devine".

It's good to see a movie that capitalizes on three basic rules: a good story, a good storyteller and good characters. When you get all three in the same movie, you don't need a lot of FX to achieve a good movie. This one has them all and you should simply judge for yourself.

This is the story of a little island village much similar to many others that once relied on fishing for a living. But now almost every inhabitant checkin the post office on the first day of each month. At the promise that a factory will settle in if there is a permanent doctor on the island, they manage to get one and to keep him always with the naive ingeniosity of people from little village. Good and tender moments, laughing galore. Raymond Bouchard is great, and so is the rest of the cast.

"Seducing Doctor Lewis" (or "La grande seduction") is the story of a remote Canadian community, an old fishing town, hoping to seduce a big-city doctor to move there so that a factory will open and take the town's population of 125 people off of public welfare. Following the precedent of "Doc Hollywood" and "Northern Exposure," the film highlights the attractive simplicity of small town life and makes it almost as irresistible to the audience as it is supposed to be to Doctor Lewis. The film has a couple small, but glaring, conceptual similarities to its predecessors: 1) as in "Doc Hollywood," the doctor is a plastic surgeon--i.e. just the sort of person who needs an adorable small town to straighten out his priorities, and 2) as in "Northern Exposure" the doctor is looking at a limited, 5-year stint in the town, something that seems more plausible than seeing a young doctor dedicating his entire future career to a town of just over 100 people. All in all, "Seducing Doctor Lewis" is the seductive little film it sets out to be, nearly mustering a charm equal to "Waking Ned Divine." And one has to admire the filmmakers for sidestepping the potential clichés that the film's ending could have stooped to. David Boutin, also, plays a very likable doctor, while looking strangely like a Dominique Pinon whose body has been stretched to leading-man proportions.

What is it about remote coastal communities that makes them so perfect for feel-good funnies such as these? There's something evocative and atavistic about the sea and fishing folk. Maybe it's somewhere in the roots of all of us, and we never fail to delight in seeing those apparently simple folk, apparently locked into a fading past, nevertheless conspire to outsmart the sophisticated city slicker who comes into their midst. I must go down to the sea again, and even on a balmy Perth summer evening at one of our beautiful outdoor cinemas I could almost smell the cod and kelp and feel the keen north Atlantic wind as it tore through Ste Marie la Mauderne.

The plot was indeed clever and ironical. Dr Chris Lewis was NOT ultimately seduced by cricket, beef stroganoff, fishing, "lucky" $5 bills placed in his path, fusion jazz, nor even the lovely Eve, whom we all thought would prove the clincher in a Hollywood "boy gets girl" finale. No, not at all. He was seduced by the honest and genuine needs of a community who felt the need to resort to every degree of dishonesty to try and win his heart with all those things which ultimately proved trivial.

Congratulations, Canada Francophone, this one was a real beauty. Dix points!