Serene beauty enlivens old classic

FILM REVIEW Maria Chapdelaine

Sara Montpetit, Antoine Olivier Pilon, Robert Naylor

Director: Sébastien Pilote

Duration: 2 h 38 m

Available: In theatres

When I spoke to filmmaker Sébastien Pilote at the Toronto International Film Festival, where his new film Maria Chapdelaine had its world première this month, he told me he didn’t see it as an example of “slow cinema.”

Nevertheless, this is by far the longest of several adaptations of the beloved French novel, written by Louis Hémon in the 1910s when he was working on a farm in what is now Maria-chapdelaine Regional County Municipality. That’s the kind of influence his book had.

The story was filmed in 1934 (an hour and 17 minutes), 1950 (1:40) and 1983 (1:47). Pilote’s version clocks in at two hours and 38 minutes, and spends a great deal of time setting the scene, and the pace, of life in the region at the turn of the last century.

Maria Chapdelaine also features the youngest woman to take the title role. Sara Montpetit is 19, a far cry from the 30-somethings who populated earlier films.

Maria lives with her parents and siblings on a remote farm “on the edge of the pioneer frontier,” all but cut off from the world.

Lorenzo (Robert Naylor) has come back to the region to sell his land, having moved to Massachusetts to find work in the cities there. He tries to sell Maria on the idea of moving away from Quebec with him. But local farmer Eutrope (Antoine Olivier Pilon) also has a thing for her. And no one seems to realize at first that she has eyes for François Paradis (Émile Schneider). It’s your classic love quadrangle.

Pilote, who also wrote the adaptation, keeps us apprised of romantic issues (the fourth of his episodic chapter headings is The Suitors) but he is also keen on crafting a portrait of the people of the time, with another chapter called We Will Make Land.

The work of “making land,” that is clearing the bush, was not easy. Maria’s father (Sébastien Ricard) concludes: “Today’s youngsters don’t know what hardship is!”

There’s another bit of humour when a foreign visitor is asked what he thinks of Canada. “I imagine you get used to it,” he replies.

It wouldn’t do to say what path Maria ultimately takes, although a lot of readers already know. But that won’t lessen the pleasure of the journey, or the stark scenery of Quebec that serves as a backdrop. ∏∏∏½