A new adaptation of Maria Chapdelaine, the flagship novel by Louis Hémon? We can be skeptical about the fact that a filmmaker celebrated for the originality of his filmography, author of his own stories, brings to the screen a well-known story, already adapted three times to the cinema.
What Sébastien Pilote has achieved (The disappearance of fireflies) dispels doubts. His Maria Chapdelaine is a personal film, bearing its signature, its gaze. It is not necessary to compare it with what was done between 1934 and 1982, as what it offers is imbued with its reflections on the occupation of the territory, on the clash of models, on the pivotal moments.
One hundred years after its publication by Grasset, and nearly forty years after its last and only adaptation by a Quebecer (Gilles Carle), Maria Chapdelaine returns to the big screen. This 2021 version, of a well-groomed realism, exudes authenticity, without frills, without excess – except for a bird’s-eye view (drone flight?). Each of the choices that have been made, from the costumes to the music through the lighting, sometimes by candlelight, gives the whole its splendor.
Pilot takes us back to the beginning of the XXe century by remaining faithful to Haemon. The dialogues take up large extracts from the original text, like the eloquent and poetic “show me the wood upright, let me lay it down”. This does not prevent him from putting his own, to integrate Gaston Miron or to place, a cappella, a traditional song in the voice of Father Chapdelaine (Sébastien Ricard) – one of the most moving scenes.
Credibility comes from the main character, the backbone of this story located north of Lac-Saint-Jean. Sara Montpetit, brilliant in her non-verbal expression, embodies much better than her predecessors the 17 years of Maria Chapdelaine and her awakening to amorous passion.
The Chapdelaines live “on the edge of the pioneer front”, drawn ever further north by the father, to clear new lands. The isolation of their house does not make it less a pole of attraction, especially for the trio who covets Maria: Eutrope Gagnon, the closest neighbor, François Paradis, the coureur des bois, and Lorenzo Surprenant, the expatriate in South.
We are entitled to an almost total closed session at the Chapdelaines. If the exterior scenes abound, if the ax blows punctuate the days, it is the point of view of the interior of the house that predominates. The director thus seems to salute the strength of the home and, beyond that, that of the mother (Hélène Florent), resilient and pragmatic, who sacrifices her own dreams.
The love story is placed at the heart of the shock of visions. Punctuated with social metaphors, Maria Chapdelaine is a sort of return to the origins of today’s Quebec. The issues that Pilote raised in The dismantling, his second feature film, find their source there.
To choose among her suitors, for Maria, is to choose between leaving or staying. Go to the city, to the world of consumption and leisure, or stay to build, clear, work with your hands. The almost whispered answer she gives is half fig, half grape, because it is complex. By unearthing this story, Sébastien Pilote is relaunching the debate, while the climate emergency demands that we review our relationship with nature.
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