La Grande Séduction

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.

This is one of those films which reminds viewers that the medium can be smart and very, very funny at the same time. Even better, La Grande Seduction manages to make an audience laugh throughout its length without constantly resorting to the tired bathroom, sex or slapstick humour employed in so many other films.

Like the most predictable humour found in modern sitcoms, the laughs are derived from deception in one form or another. Still, the over-the-top means employed and the end itself - convincing a city doctor to reside in a physician-free outport - allows any viewer to simply enjoy what unfolds, and relish both the obvious and the obtuse.

I had the pleasure of watching the movie with my in-laws, and can attest that the guffaws span all ages and can break through any language barrier. Hands down, it was the funniest movie any of us had seen in a number of years. Highly recommended.

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The irony of the situation was that we purchased the DVD just for the purpose of seeing the scenery. La Grande Seduction was shot in Harrington Harbor, an island outport on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which my wife and I had visited earlier this summer. The lovely village connected only by boardwalks and dominated by pedestrians and ATVs instead of cars is surrounded by the wonderful geography typical of the St. Lawrence Basse-Cote-Nord (Lower North Shore). Unsurprisingly, the real but unique location, still a working fishing village, does not have problems attracting doctors or anyone else. The painful part is not being able to stay longer.

"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.

"La grande seduction" is not a bad film. In fact, it's a modestly good film. I laughed a lot during the screening, even though anyone could see where this plot is going, right from the start. And that storyline annoyed me a bit considering that I was constantly reminded of a Michael J. Fox comedy which has a very similar plot: "Doc Hollywood". I have never seen "...Hollywood" in it's totality by a lack of interest, but nonetheless, no viewer can ignore the resemblance. Still, the unique backdrop and setting, the colorful characters, and the non- pretentious nature of "La grande seduction", make this movie enjoyable. But it is not the masterpiece some pretend it is. It is well written, simply but skillfully directed, offers good performances by a great cast and can still make for good entertainment. But that is as far as it will go. And young director Pouliot never pretended he was making "8 1/2". He was aiming for a light comedy, and that is what you get. No more, no less.

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.