Montreal: This season’s most ambitious teleroman undertaking is Virginie, a marathon four-nights-a-week tv saga set smack dab in the middle of contemporary Quebec life.

Written by Fabienne Larouche (Scoop, Urgence) 120 half-hour episodes are currently in live-edit production at Radio-Canada’s Centre International de Radiotelevision.

Chantal Fontaine plays Virginie, a nicely tanned and well-motivated 30-year-old phys ed teacher, a role carefully scripted to appeal to legions of mostly female teleroman fans. With her love for life, Virginie confronts the joys and perils of extended families, rebelling misfit teenagers, retentive school directors, a retired if somewhat intrusive mom and joltingly jaded colleagues.

The broadcaster has guaranteed at least two full seasons, 240 episodes, with a decision on a third expected any day, says the show’s director/co-ordinator Robert Gagnon.

One episode of Virginie is being taped daily.

‘There is no post-production,’ says Gagnon. ‘At the end of the day the tape can be broadcast directly. The live edit means we do the edit as we tape. And while we’re adding dialogue, we add the sound (effects and foley) in addition to the music.’

Jean L’Italien plays Virginie’s journalist husband, Monique Chabot is the mother, and Anne Dorval plays a brilliant lawyer and Virginie’s best pal. Muriel Dutil, Claude Blanchard, Robert Gravel and Nathalie Gascon round out this all-star cast.

Virginie’s directing team includes Maude Martin, Michel Beriault, Monique Brassard, Regent Bourque, Laurent Craig and Louis Fraser. The music is from Michel Donato and James Gelfand. Jean-Salvy is Radio-Canada director, tv drama.

Radio-Canada’s in-house teleroman production includes Bouscotte, Victor-Levy Beaulieu’s highly anticipated feuding families saga; 4 et demi, a young-couple/first-apartment soap extended to 60 minutes this year; and two young family series entering their final season, Guy Fournier’s Les Heritiers Duval and Sous un ciel variable.

The last daily teleroman, Marilyn, Lise Payette’s community-minded story of a kindhearted, take-charge cleaning lady, will be rebroadcast weekday afternoons.

Stranger in the House

Stranger in the House is the first feature from Filmo Bandito producers Elisabeth Gimber and Geoffrey Patenaude.

A thriller which will certainly take the video and pay-tv route, Gimber describes the plot as ‘a cat and mouse game set around a jewelry thief and a husband’s conspiracy to kill his wife.’

Rodney Gibbons (The Neighbor) is directing this 35mm, 20-day shoot on location near Sutton in the Eastern Townships.

Cast includes Michele Greene (L.A. Law), Kathleen Kinmont, Steve Railsback and Claude Genest (Sirens). Georges Archambault is dop and Csaba Kertesz is the art director.

Filmo Bandito has produced shorts, corporate films and serviced larger projects. ‘In the last 18 months we decided to take the plunge and start developing feature films. This project came along with the help of Allegro Films Distribution and Tom Berry,’ says Gimber.

The budget is $1.4 million. Image Organization has foreign rights and Allegro has other territories, including the u.s.

Daalder’s Hysteria

Filming is in its final week on Hysteria, a Canada/u.k psycho-thriller from director/writer Rene Daalder. Amanda Plummer (Pulp Fiction), the great Patrick ‘Be Seeing You’ McGoohan (Braveheart, The Prisoner) and Michael Maloney (Midwinter Tales) are the stars.

In this contemporary tale an eccentric psychologist, played by McGoohan, champions society’s collective interests with the discovery of a device which unites mankind by melding overly individualistic human psyches. Maloney’s character becomes a part of the sick doc’s madness when he learns of the eminent scientist’s experiments on a wheelchair-bound woman, played by Plummer.

‘This is a very exciting project for us,’ says producer Kay Salomon-Marchand. ‘Not only does it tap the full creative genius of Rene but we have a truly talented ensemble cast led by the distinguished Patrick McGoohan.’ She pegs the film as ‘quirky, intelligent, macabre and fun.’

Salomon-Marchand is an established Montreal investment banker and recently entered a production partnership with Daalder (Habitat).

The stcvq crew includes dop Jean Lepine (Pret a Porter), unit pm Daniele Rohrbach, production designer Michel Proulx and costume designer Francois Laplante.

Alliance Vivafilm will distribute in Canada. August Entertainment has international rights. Presales were concluded in Germany, Brazil and Spain. Screen Partners of London, Eng. is Hysteria’s foreign sales insurer.

Suissa’s new family

Daniele Suissa is back from Toronto with as much energy and enthusiasm as ever.

She’s spending the month in the beautiful Southern Quebec region near Mansonville along with coproducer Victor Harrouch filming L’Enfant des Appalaches, a Productions sda telefilm coproduced with France’s Ellipse Fiction.

Productions djs, the holding company for Suissa’s Trois-Scenes and the slew of mow thrillers shot for Hamster, intends to develop mainly English-track international projects, hopefully with sda and publicly traded parent Coscient Group. Suissa’s partner is choreographer and filmmaker Ann Ditchburn (Moving Pictures).

‘I have a thriller (Loss of Face) which Donald Martin wrote and we developed through a joint company in Toronto. He wrote it, I will direct,’ says Suissa.

djs recently opened an l.a. office, with Kai Hand as manager/ agent.

Suissa, who spent three years in t.o., hopes she can do more business with new friends at Coscient.

‘They have done very well for themselves and the industry,’ she says. ‘First of all they’re very strong financing people who trust people like me to do the creative job. It’s nice to have this kind of big family ring. It’s like having a private Telefilm.’

Suissa and Ditchburn have developed an animation concept for Cactus Animation, Coscient’s animation subsidiary.