Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

lasttimeisaw Near Quebec, a rural mine town, the establishing shots in the opening of Claude Jutra's much vaunted work, MON ONCLE ANTOINE cast its magic spell on us with its expansively mountainous locale, and the time-frame of the film's diegesis is clocked in 1949, right before Christmas. Looking through the eyes of a teenage boy Benoit (Gagnon), Jutra's ethnographic artwork assiduously records what he sees and experiences in a few days' span, Benoit's uncle Antoine (Duceppe) and auntie Cécile (Thibault) run a general shop but also manage the town's undertaker business, a funeral ceremony near the beginning presided by Antoine and his shop clerk Fernand (Jutra himself, oozing with assured apathy) subtly conveys a ghost of friction between them, soon an overtly uncomfortable shot of Fernand and Cécile's encroaching closeness hints something smack of a tacitly connived adultery is on the sly, maybe that's why. On the Christmas Eve, townsfolk gather in the shop to see the Christmas display and purchase gifts, a young couple announce their engagement, a voluptuous wife comes to try on her ordered corset, by default becomes the cynosure, on the same floor, intrigued by his awakening curiosity of the other sex, Benoit fumbles around Carmen (Champagne), a comely girl of his age who also works in the shop, a budding puppy love is always adorable. Still, even at Christmas, people die, Madame Poulin's (Loiselle) eldest son dies that day (the cross overhangs is jarringly prominent in that frame of pathos), and Benoit is permitted, for the very first time, to go with Antoine to pick up the body, to-and-fro, it is a sortie saddled with abundant snow, piercing coldness, influence of liquor, and an ingenuous teen's rite-of-passage to face death at point-blank range and saver his first taste of misery, deception and dissatisfaction from the adult world. From excited to dismayed, then exasperated, the non-professional Jacques Gagnon exerts devoted commitment during the key sequences where a crepuscular snowscape unremittingly precipitates viewers' body temperate to slump with the characters on the screen when riding through the rigors of a wintry night, during which, a snowfield face-off between Benoit and the old soak Antoine lets the emotional punch kick in, a lifetime of disappointment is encapsulated by Duceppe's drunkard hurling, especially when it is closely followed by what is happening inside Cécile's cozy boudoir, life is never fair and it is a miracle how can we not all succumb to be cynical and misanthropic after being buffeted by the bread-and-butter blues. That is the damning feeling encircles Jutra's unflinching realism-inflected enterprise, it is boldly unsentimental, but also alarmingly despondent, that's how it reaches the finish-line, whatever Benoit sees through the windowpane, real or fanciful, this Bildungsroman of an impressionable boy can only descend further into uninviting harshness, much as the film's natural backdrop, MON ONCLE ANTOINE is more congenitally formidable than heartfelt compelling, but that's also where lies its enduring strength!

sharky_55 At the core of My Uncle Antoine is a coming-of-age story about a young Quebecan boy helping out his family with the store on Christmas Eve. But it is also rooted within the historical context of the Grande Noirceur, or The Great Darkness, a period of social unrest within the French Canadian province post World War 2 under the reign of the fiercely conservative Maurice Duplessis. For residents who have experienced this it rings true - the push of residents towards rural, menial occupations, the privilege and devotion afforded to the powerful Catholic church, the utter futility of worker strikes, and the opposition towards unions. Bathroom graffiti hastily scribbled seems to recognise the discontent with the political regime. Indeed, the asbestos mine is photographed in such a way that it envelopes and suffocates the small town like a great grey shroud, in a similar manner to how the lives of the low class Quebecans are subjugated and held in place by systems beyond their control. A miner's story, which bookends the film, tells of his singular attempt to quit his job and leave for a better existence as a logger. Suffice to say, it is an unsuccessful one. As switch over to the main storyline it takes on the boyish excitement of Benoit, who is helping his uncle and aunt set up the Christmas display for their general store. It is the mark of a small town that it is the show-piece that all the residents look forward to each year, and there is a little mock unveiling that takes place. When a shy young girl announces her engagement, the whole town cheers and ruffles the hair of the young groom-to-be and drinks to the happy couple. And they are all intimately familiar with the singing voice of aunt Cecile and how she acts as the serenader for all the big events. This warm family is also accompanied by a lively score that seems whipped up from the young, excited mind of Benoit himself; a fast-paced, melodic violin piece that is fit for a jig but which shows the whole town coming together for a snowball fight. Isn't Christmas the most lovely time of the year?The film is slow paced - it unveils these aspects of the community, along with oddities that Benoit is accustomed to. His uncle Antoine is also the town undertaker, and as such coffins line the walls and floors of the second floor; but this is initially just a playground for the young boy, a perfect moment of blossoming sexuality where he and Carmen have the urges, but not the knowledge or maturity to proceed (you'll notice how they almost immediately make up afterwards). There is that dreary sequence where the mine-owner tosses his yearly 'bonuses' at each house; even without showing their contents they look practically empty. The youth and kids excitedly fight and grab at the stockings while the parents and elderly watch glumly, as they have been through this many times and are wise not to get their hopes up. And Benoit and his friend sit somewhere in the middle; they aren't swayed by the stockings, but pelt the owner's horse with snowballs, perhaps not quite old enough to lose those wide grins on their faces. Even as his uncle is called out for a grim job on Christmas Eve to collect a corpse he still has that big grin on his face; he begs to go as if he was running out the door with his friends, and the lively score once again characterises his excitement and joy. But then he is silent as they approach the tragedy-stricken family. He sits while they quietly eat the lavish dinner the mother has prepared, as if they were just visitors, and is stoic as the children enjoy the gift of candy, which is given a similar treatment as the stockings beforehand. Could he have suddenly realised the gravity of the situation in a way that the grinning teenager earlier could not? Brault's camera first and foremost shows its passion through its quick, frantic zooms - and there is not one more important than the reveal of the dead boy, scarcely older than Benoit himself, a frozen, lifeless mirror-image of himself. It is in that moment we know that his grin will never be as wide, his playfulness never as naive or mindless. What follows after is just a brutal reaffirmation of the fact. In a heartbreaking monologue, Antoine spills out a confession that is not only intensely personal but reflects the social context of the period and the suffocation of the political regime. We see Benoit's new look, his stony-faced stare boring into the heart of Cecile who knows that she has been caught out, but does not immediately recognise this Benoit. And in that final, haunting POV shot, a new consciousness behind the camera, as if he is seeing for this first time, not just looking. The mastery of My Uncle Antoine is that is is so tragic because it invests so much into the small Quebecan town, and the intricate, painful details. This elevates the emotional trauma to new levels. See the tenderness of a final sexual embrace between Jos and Madame Pouline, and how they come together in the barn. See how the exact same treatment is applied to aunt Cecile's affair; not with the usual aggressive lust, but with an air of sweetness in how Fernand stares at her and tentatively compliments her dress. Spare a though for Carmen, who think she is old enough to be wearing lipstick, before hastily washing it off when Benoit teases her about it. In her father's eyes, she is less a daughter and more a worker.

vivalarsx This Canadian coming-of-age tale is a magnificent example of how powerful a "small" character piece can be. Young Benoit (Jacques Gagnon, an amateur whose expressive face could put many a more-established actor to shame) lives with his uncle and aunt (Jean Duceppe and Olivette Thibault) in a tiny village in which the primary employment opportunity is mining asbestos. Over the course of a deceptively low key Christmas Eve and Day in the early 1940s, everything Benoit thinks he knows about his small world will be turned on its ear and he will become a man. There is possibly no way to do justice (at least for me) to the precision and delicacy with which the director Claude Jutra infuses the humdrum of day-to-day life. So much happens, and yet it could be argued that "nothing" really happens. In reality, Life happens. While some events are more dramatic and life-changing than others, most everything is given its full due, presented with perceptive grace. (A small barrel of nails taking up precious walking space in the general store that Benoit's relatives own—his uncle is also the town undertaker-- is just as prominent a storyline as some of the more devastating turns of events—and when it is finally picked up to be put away, the film gets its biggest laugh by having the young man carrying it still lift his leg high to step over it.) Jutra isn't afraid to take his time and thoroughly investigate all aspects of life in this depressing little town; the primary foci are on sex and death—about which Benoit will learn much, though he can't make sense of all of it. What's most amazing about Mon oncle Antoine isn't that it's unlike anything we've seen before, but that it shows us the utterly familiar and universal moments of life and makes us see them with a depth we're unused to. But what I've never seen anything like in any movie is an astonishing scene between Benoit and Carmen (Lyne Champagne, another emotive amateur), the young store clerk who his uncle and aunt have basically bought from her poor father. Upstairs in the storeroom of the store, Benoit and Carmen flirt and chase each other among the caskets, she in the bridal veil a customer waits for downstairs. They end up falling to the floor, and he puts his hand matter-of-factly on her breast. She turns away, crying, and flees; Benoit, shaken, lies down on the floor and realizes they've been observed by the store's chief clerk Fernand (played by Jutra himself). It is a simple, but almost staggering scene of such allusive beauty, with both characters caught up in a moment they can't quite make sense of. And the "sex and death" metaphor is unstressed, allowing us to try and comprehend all the subtext without a lot of editorializing. It is in the last third of the movie, though, that Jutra brings all his themes together. A young boy has died suddenly, and Antoine has to drive hours away through the snow on a horse-drawn carriage to retrieve the body. Benoit begs Aunt Cecile to let him go (Uncle Antoine warns him, "Don't get all excited"), and the literal journey to manhood begins. But Jutra never bogs the journey down, full as it is, with the weight of self-importance; we watch what happens, we process what it means to Benoit, and we are allowed to make sense of it on our own. Jutra stresses nothing, he just shows it. (Benoit has a moment when he has to touch the dead boy's body. He hesitates for a moment, and suddenly takes hold, and I thought, "I've just watched a boy become a man, right this second." His nascent maturity allows Benoit to react as he does when the trip back home—and the arrival at home, as well—completely knock him out of the world he's known; he's angry, he's hurt, but he's not confused. He sees what's what, and accepts it for what it is. I wish I could say Antoine is perfect, because it comes awfully damn close. There is a really silly dream sequence near the end that takes all the allusion we've witnessed and makes it rather obvious, but this is about 90 seconds out of a movie, and—though disappointingly lumpy—can't undo everything Jutra has so phenomenally laid out before. This movie affected me as few movies have; certainly nothing this year (with more than a few really fine films) comes close. In stressing again how small it is (which, as I've stated more than a few times, is right up my alley, aesthetically), I attempt to not overhype it. It's tiny, but it is as powerful a movie as I've ever seen. **** and Most Highly Recommended

mdkersey As my wife said, this film is "more boring than being stuck in traffic." There is no plot. The story drifts aimlessly. The characters are unremarkable.What did I take away from the movie? That some Quebecois are as susceptible to alcohol as was the American Indian (despite the French having eons to develop wines and liquors and evolve kidneys to deal with both), that Quebecois have no concept of a work ethic (i.e., they're inherently lazy), that teenage boys are obsessed with tits and that life in a far-Northern asbestos mining town is sometimes harsh.The first two are questionable at best and, as for the second two, well, blow me down! The film did make some attempt to show the division between those Quebecois of English extraction and those of French. But we initially had the audio set to English and entirely missed that undertone until one character explicitly stated (in English) that "I don't understand English." whereupon we reset the audio to French, the subtitles to English and (unfortunately believing that we were missing something) rewound to the start again. Another 10 minutes of my life that I will never recover.