French Film Festival
Jean-Michel Bouchard (Rémy Girard) is a lifelong bachelor and retired archivist who is living out the late autumn of his life in a spacious apartment in a comfortable retiral home. His inner thoughts are heard as he strolls the home’s environs in his tweedy three-piece suits, when we learn that he has come to a calm, open eyed acceptance of his stage of life and is not living with regrets, possibly helped by regular visits from the mysterious and beautiful Flavie (Marie-Mai Bouchard). Monsieur Bouchard navigates new situations such as library books being replaced by video games and a fellow resident declaring a preferred new name, with a mildly confused politeness.
We also learn that he has lived a contented life and that neither he nor his parents had ever taken part in any political demonstrations. So when a group of protesters arrive with megaphones declaring the rights of Canadian First Nation people, despite the protesters being exposed by a woman from Canada’s First Nation who revealed after getting a dumb response to addressing them in her native language, that they were “…not Indian, [but] – concerned citizens”, he is utterly bemused but remains detached.
The aim of the aggressive protesters is to bring about the removal of a mural, in the building that is now the residential home, depicting the meeting of French colonists with an Indian tribe.
The pressure on the home’s director Suzanne Francoeur (Sophie Lorain) from her boss the Health Minister (Caroline Néron) to appease the protesters and meet their demands at all costs. The catalogue of possible repercussions no matter what move she makes leads to the employment of a firm of reluctant painters to obliterate the offending mural with several layers of gloss paint. In turn the Culture Minister (René Richard Cyr) and Director of Beaux Arts (Yves Jacques) flounce in to denounce her insensitive cultural action and it is these events that stir Bouchard back to engaging with life.
When Monsieur Bouchard learns that Suzanne, with whom there is an unspoken connection, has been estranged from her only daughter he calls in help from young Serbian archivist Vera Ivanovic (Katia Gorshkova), with whom he has a straight talking banter-like relationship, to do some detective work to track her down.
Poignant and gently funny, this 2023 film from Quebecois director Denys Arcand exposes invisibility and loneliness through one man looking at the end of his life with quiet equanimity till today’s culture clashes literally land on his doorstep and trigger events to shift his perspective.
The virtue signallers, leaving litter in their wake, move on to their next target, but the film ends with a gorgeous Autumnal scene that is as full of hope as its path is full of golden leaves.
Film credits appear to a fine rendition of the Cajun classic Jole Blon from the band les Revelers.
Running time: 115 mins
Edinburgh screening: Dominion on 10th December 2025 @ 18:45
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 