Sébastien Pilote was eager to present Maria Chapdelaine at TIFF. His adaptation of the novel by Louis Hémon (1913) was launched on the big screen at the end of the week in front of spectators of Toronto distanced and masked. He is one of only two Quebecers present there with feature films. The story of this shy teenager, who must choose between three suitors in her remote corner of Lac-Saint-Jean of yesteryear, lands at TIFF ironically in the Contemporary World section.
It is a work of beauty and silences, with powerful images by Michel La Veaux and a slow rhythm (too much at the beginning, then better nourished) marrying that of the seasons. The clearing, the harsh landscapes, the forest, the clearings create hypnosis. Philippe Brault’s music, with a tonic deployment, adds a dramatic load to it.
Sébastien Pilote, faithful to the novel, wanted a young Maria, where the previous adaptations, by Julien Duvivier, Marc Allegret, Gilles Carle, offered the star to thirty-something. Sara Montpetit, a newcomer, has a lot of charisma on a backdrop of play. Sébastien Ricard as papa Chapdelaine, exceptional, dominates the cast. The scene of the vigil with folk songs, the mother’s agony marked the spirits. The film has breath but is based a lot on certain segments more charged with emotion than the whole framework. Pilot avoided pathos, removed layers of religiosity. The previous adaptations stuck more closely to the melodrama in love with the housewife beauty and the adventurer who makes her dream.
It is Émile Schneider who embodies the coureur des bois François Paradis and Antoine Olivier Pilon, the less flamboyant neighbor. Two roles that would have benefited from being reversed, by better fitting the profile of the two actors. Gilbert Sicotte appears particularly tasty as a friend of the Ephrem Surprenant family. “He had played Maria’s little brother in Gilles Carle’s version,” recalls Sébastien Pilote, who liked to see him walk on this bridge.
The filmmaker claims to have carried this work within him for many years, moreover all his films address the shores and the pangs of transmission. In his film The Seller, the main character was called François Paradis. The fact that Maria Chapdelaine, a posthumous novel by the French author who lived and worked in the region, has long been defined as a pessimistic and resigned portrait of Quebecers in whom nothing has changed, irritates the filmmaker, who wants to empty the cupboard to clichés. He grew up in Saguenay, recognizes in the characters of Maria Chapdelaine, members of his family, including his grandmother, to whom he lifts his hat by celebrating the resilience of a people who need not be ashamed of their past. .
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