Le chat dans le sac

What an nice suprise, yesterday,I caught this movie on TV by pure luck. It was so good, artsy, the script was excellent and well documented on the condition of Quebec, I've learned from that movie. The actors were excellent. Anybody who is interested in finding out about the Quebecors conditions in Canada, should see that movie. A gem.

Today, only a handful of cinephiles have heard about Alain Mazars, Alain Fleischer, Cyril Collard, Jean-Claude Biette, Guy Gilles or Gilles Groulx whose birthday was yesterday. Over the past few hours, i have already watched this 2 times and i'm still happy as it took a while, but what a pleasure to see how Groulx captured the inner problems of Montreal.

In the aftermath of the quiet revolution, Barbara (Barbara Ulrich) and Claude (Claude Godbout) are unhappy couple who little by little reveal their thoughts and dissatisfaction with the sad state of affairs occurring in the country after the Québec nationalist movement. It starts with both revealing their identity in the beginning of the film after the note by the director. The couple are going through a crisis, feeling unwanted as Claude condemns Barbara's bourgeois lifestyle, he doesn't get along with her mindset and thoughts. The story itself is minuscule and is based on an the scenario of the class division, socio-political climate in Montrral 1964. There are monologues shot in pseudo-documentary style that shows the fragments of a lost hope, disillusionment, where the political discourse is accompanied by thoughts of the characters.

The cinematography is brilliant and poetic, to the point that the scene in which Barbara contemplates herself in the mirror evokes the pessimistic side of Claude without forcing mandatory montage shots to expose the toxicity. The music deserves a special mention and it follows almost all movements as if accompanying the inner restlessness of capturing the timeline. It is the only known film soundtrack by Jazz legend John Coltrane ever recorded as he was commissioned by the National Film Production Agency of Canada to take charge as the composer. Brownie points for the reference to Jean Vigo, a French film Icon whose influence on The French New Wave was huge inspiring so many directors. But i cannot deny the fact that this inspired by the works of New wave all within a rhetorical scheme closer to Jean-Luc Godard. Nonetheless, this is a landmark film in the development of cinema in Quebec and i guarantee that arthouse fans will love it for the aesthetic pleasure as the technical side of the film is almost flawless.

This NFB production, transformed mid-project into a 35mm feature by director Groulx, must have been a traumatic viewing experience to Quebeckers accustomed to decades of church-sponsored morality plays. It is the first Canadian film to have absorbed the stylistic and thematic tics of the French New Wave. It's radical-boy-and-liberal-girlfriend just like Godard, only this one takes the side of the girl, which is nice. While there are some impressive rhetorical flourishes, this is a study in rebellion, not a rebellion in itself - which is what happens when you ask a government agency to produce a French New Wave film. Anyway, the boy goes to live in the country and sulk while reading newspapers, while the girl stays in town and gets fed up with him. So in other words, it resonated! I don't care if it fails to present any empowering solution to the guy's nihilist radicalism. I loved this film, it's beautiful.

Some might find the didactic poetry form of "Le Chat dans le sac" hard to watch, but for me it provided a very personal perspective into the mind set of the socially conscious youth of the time. As Quebec was coming out of the Quiet revolution, a new wave of thought was emerging for stronger independence and a growing sense of Quebec as a nation was forming. This obviously lead to huge changes in Canadian politics, and so the film is very interesting to study some 40 years later.

Stylistically, it lends itself to the ever Canadian style of documentary, and with good reason. It was conceived within the French studio of the NFB, but later converted to a feature fiction. At the exact same time, the English NFB came out with "Nobody Waved Goodbye" which was ironically conceived the same way, converted the same way, and deals with many parallel issues but through the eyes of a discontent teen in the Toronto area.

It might be hard to find, but worth the effort!

With Jean-Luc Godard as his guide, French-Canadian filmmaker Gilles Groux has put together an improvised, episodic film of a young French-Canadian nationalist in search of himself. He has an affair with a young actress to whom he is drawn because she is Jewish, and he expects her to understand and sympathize with the difficulties of minority groups, but they gradually drift apart. As the movie amounts to a character sketch of a youth who is neither particularly sympathetic or interesting, it soon becomes tedious. Canadian cineastes point to this film as a breakthrough documentary-styled political tract styled after the French New Wave; however, in retrospect the movie is shallow imitation Godard. Viewed under the title CAT IN THE SACK.