La Grande Séduction

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.

What a pleasure to see a film like this from Canada! With our penchant for serious, naval gazing, "deep", issue-laden movies, it is so refreshing to find a solid story with solid characters that is entertaining, creative and unexpected. Along with Les Invasions Barbares, this is a banner year for Canada!

Hopefully La Grand Seduction will be our "Waking Ned Devine" or "Full Monty"...a breakout film that will be received and recognized around the world. It is a long time since I've had tears in my eyes from laughing in a film. It is true that the sudden turn of events at the very end of the film is a little forced, but the rest of the film is so great that it is easily forgiven.

I definitely recommend catching this one in theatres soon!

This is a sweet funny film and not to be missed.

Small town Quebec is captured beautifully, full of characters that are depressed over the death of the fishing industry, reluctant to leave the town for work in the city and willing to do anything to get an industry to open a plant and provide employment.

The shame of lining up and getting their welfare cheques every month is palpable.

Part of the requirements of opening a manufacturing plant in the village is that it have a doctor and a population of over 200, neither of which this village has. The efforts to secure the doctor and convince the manufacturers of a non-existent larger population is the crux of the humour. That and the cricket scenes. A wonderful effort, beautifully filmed.

8 out of 10.

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!

If you had the chance to see this movie in theatres, you probably noticed that everybody was laughing throughout the film. In other words, it's funny and funny. Well written script, it's unexpected all the time. Good cast choice as well. What I like is that it's a caricaturization of the hospital situation in regional Quebec. Congratulations guys!