Family secrets drive plot in

director Lepage’s feature debut

Montreal: Unlocking the secret of a dark confession made to a priest stands at the center of a family mystery and a man’s search for his past in Le Confessional, director Robert Lepage’s feature film debut.

Set in contemporary Quebec, the film opens when one of two estranged brothers fails to attend their father’s funeral, thus beginning an inquiry into old family secrets dating from the early 1950s. Lepage’s story shares several similarities, including locations, with another film shot in Quebec City, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic I Confess (lensed in 1952). In that film, a priest hears the confession of a man who commits a murder and is subsequently wrongly charged with the crime.

Le Confessional began production June 6 and wraps in Montreal in mid-July. It is the first Canada/ France/u.k. coproduction produced in French, says producer Denise Robert (Mouvement du desir, A corps perdu) of Cinemaginaire. Robert is a filmmaker with a penchant for pioneering, and was the driving force on the first Quebec/Ontario coproduction, Montreal vu par, coproduced with Peter Sussman of Atlantis Films, Toronto.

‘What’s particularly encouraging is that we have British financing and are shooting in Quebec with Quebec actors,’ says Robert, who would like to see more exchanges between Quebec and the u.k.

Former Columbia Pictures topper and Oscar-winning producer David Puttnam (Chariots of Fire, The Mission) of London, Eng.-based Enigma and Philippe Carcassonne (Monsieur Hire) of Cinea, Paris, are the shoot’s coproducers. Cinemaginaire has a 60% interest in the film.

It may be difficult producing on behalf of first-time directors, but Robert says Lepage ‘has proven himself as a world-acclaimed theater director.’ Just prior to the shoot, Lepage was in Chicago to present his play Needles and Opium. ‘He has a real feel for cinematographic language, and that explains the strong production and craft support,’ says Robert.

Mureille Lize is the pm, Alain Dostie is the dop, Francois Laplante is the art director and Barbara Kidd of the u.k. is the costume designer. France’s Emmanuelle Castro (Au Revoir les enfants) is the editor, Jean-Claude Laureux (Trois Couleurs: Bleu Blanc et Rouge) is the sound recordist and Hans Peter Strobl of Montreal’s Marko Films is the sound mixer. Robert’s partner in the five-year-old Cinemaginaire, Daniel Louis, is the line producer.

Leading players include Lothaire Bluteau and Patrick Goyette as the two brothers and Normand Daneau as the old priest. Also starring are French/British actress Kristin Scott Thomas (Four Weddings and a Funeral), Jean-Louis Millette, British actor Ron Burridge, apparently a Hitchcock look-a-like, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Suzanne Clement, Marie Gignac and Gilles Pelletier, who appeared in I Confess.

Alliance Vivafilm is the Canadian distributor. Polygram Film International (The Crying Game, The Piano), a name synonymous with quality in the international feature film market, acquired foreign rights to the film based on the script.

Home sweet home

Genie-winning cinematographer Pierre Mignot is happy to be home in Montreal’s artistic colony of Outremont, where he intends to get a little r&r after completing three highly charged months of filming in gay Paris on Robert Altman’s latest, Pret-a-Porter, a movie about the rich and crazy world of haute couture. Mignot and Jean Lepine double-teamed as the shoot’s dops.

Mignot, who has worked regularly with the 69-year-old maverick director since the early ’80s, says he’s amazed at Altman’s energy and ability to work with huge crews and casts, in this case the film’s stars, Tim Robbins and Julia Roberts, and a host of others.

Mourir shoot underway

Production is underway on the final two (Quebec) hours of Mourir d’amour, the 10-hour Canada/France drama series directed by Richard Ciupka and coproduced by Montreal’s Telefiction and France’s Groupe Le Sabre and Ellipse Programme.

Shooting here goes throughout June then moves on to the port of Marseilles in France where the final two (French) hours will be shot in July.

This series, based on a bible by screenwriter Fernand Dansereau and scripted in equal parts by Quebec and French writers under the age of 35, tells the story of two passionate but troubled lovers who vow never to be separated, even in death. They meet over 10 one-hour episodes, each time in a new place, under different circumstances and epochs, condemned to reincarnate throughout eternity until they discover the real meaning of love. Leading players are Lydia Andrei and Yves Soutiere.

Ciupka, director of the five Quebec episodes, says he’s fascinated by the subject of reincarnation and was developing a lapsed feature film on the subject on location in Syria when war broke out in Kuwait.

Mourir d’amour will be presented on Radio-Quebec and France 3 in letterbox or cinemascope format, a precedent, says the trilingual director.

‘The films have a feature-film look, and each episode is so different, visually unique,’ says Ciupka, a cinematographer whose credits include four Claude Chabrol movies and the Louis Malle classic, Atlantic City.

‘They’re all emotional pieces, even though there’s one (episode) set in Beirut involving a hostage-taking,’ says Ciupka. ‘They are real actor vehicles about one thing, emotions.’

The music for the Quebec episodes is by Francois Dompierre. Thomas Vamos (Les Filles de Caleb, Blanche) is the cinematographer, Nicole Hilareguy is the pm, Normand Sarrazin is the art director and Yves Chaput will edit on Lightworks at Sonolab.

Telefiction is in the midst of a busy summer shooting slate. It’s a wrap for Geopuces, a 26 x 15-minute kiddies’ show on Canal Famille; Zoom, a film and tv industry update magazine produced weekly for pay-tv movie channel Super Ecran; and the heartbreaking story of cabaret singer Alys Robi, Alys, mon idole, mon amie, a four-hour, $4 million miniseries which begins principal photography in the first week of July.

Producers on the $8 million Mourir d’amour are Claude Veillet and Jacques Bonin of Telefiction and Georges Campana and Francois Charlent for Le Sabre and Ellipse respectively.

Investors include Telefilm Canada, sogic, Centre national de la cinematographie and public broadcasters Radio-Quebec and the France 3 network. The series is being produced within the framework of a Canada/France tv drama exchange program known as Franco-Fictions and will air in primetime this fall.

Hebert scores double Quebec/Alberta win

It’s a double coup for filmmaker Bernar Hebert, who took home both Quebec/Alberta prizes for innovation in television at this year’s Banff Television Festival.

Hebert won in the ’30 minutes or less’ category for Legende de glace and its beautiful glacial images, and in the ‘more than 30 minutes’ category for Le petit musee Velasquez, described by the jury as a timeless mix of art forms and cinematography.

The awards were presented to Hebert by sogic president Charles Denis and Alberta Community Development Minister Gary Mar.

The winners of the Alberta/ Quebec award for innovation in feature filmmaking are announced in the fall.