Montreal: Bernard Emond’s first feature film La Femme qui boit, a moving portrait of a proud alcoholic woman’s dying recollections, and the France/Canada coproduction Le Pornographe have been retained for official selection in the International Critics’ Week sidebar of this year’s Cannes International Film Festival, May 9-20.

Canadian actor Pascale Bussieres (Un 32 aout sur terre) returns to the festival this year starring alongside Emmanuelle Beart in Catherine Corsini’s La Repetition. A psychological drama about two women who attempt to rebuild a friendship ended 15 years earlier, the film is one of 23 selected for official competition and is a majority France/Canada coproduction from producers Denise Robert and Daniel Louis of Montreal’s Cinemaginaire.

Robert and Robert Lantos of Serendipity Point Films were in Cannes last year with the festival’s closing film, Denys Arcand’s Stardom.

Repetition’s Canadian distrib is Robert Menard of Fun Film.

Another Cannes 2001 selection, in the Un Certain Regard section, is the Far North saga Atanarjuat – The Fast Runner, the first Inuktitut-language feature film from director Zacharias Kunuk. The film was coproduced by Isuma Igloolik Productions through the National Film Board’s Aboriginal Filmmaking Program.

Bertrand Bonello’s Le Pornographe, a majority France/Canada coproduction, was coproduced in Canada by Bruno Jobin of In Extremis Images. Pierre Latour of Film Tonic is the distrib.

La Femme’s distrib, Christian Larouche of Christal Films (Lions Gate Films in the English-track market), says only seven international movies have been selected for the 40th edition of Critics’ Week, a sidebar showcase for new and innovative filmmakers, ‘godfathered’ this year by British director Ken Loach.

La Femme was produced by Bernadette Payeur of ACPAV. It opened this year’s Rendez-vous du cinema quebecois and stars Elise Guilbault, Luc Picard, Fanny Malette and Michel Forget. Christal released the film in Quebec theatres April 20.

In Quebec box-office news, Larouche reports Francis Veber’s comedy Le Placard is well on its way to joining the tres select club of five French movies (all acquired by Larouche) with theatrical receipts of $1 million or more. Le Placard was the top-grossing film in Quebec during the first two weeks of April, bringing in $261,382 on 37 screens ($7,064 per screen) during its opening April 6-8 weekend. The 10-day take was $637,000.

Fournier returns with Les Parfaits

Guy Fournier, one of the legendary names in Quebec TV, marks his return to Reseau TVA this season with the new half-hour comedy Les Parfaits. Fournier’s past hits with TVA include Peau de banane and Ent’Cadieux.

Valerie Gagne (Le Retour) and former pop idol Rene Simard star in this satirical teleroman as the ‘perfect’ couple – both civil servants, one with the feds, the other with the Quebec government – with two perfect children played by Rosemarie Houde and Alexandre Compagna, and a model home in Levis, QC, just across the river from Quebec City.

And while ‘la famille Parfait’ has its share of problems like every other family, they always manage to keep a happy face and turn things to their advantage. Of course, friends and extended family members are a lot less perfect, but the good couple never lacks in understanding.

Cast includes Rita Lafontaine, Raymond Bouchard, Martine Francke, Pierrette Robitaille, Janine Sutto, Marcel Leboeuf and Patrice Coquereau.

JPL Productions, under VP Pierre Ste-Marie, is producing. The series starts taping at the JPL studios this week. Marie-Lise Beaudoin and Roger Legault are the directors.

Les Parfaits received a CTF Licence Fee Program top-up of $511,915.

Wasyk’s diabolical fable

Darrell Wasyk, director of the Genie Award-winning films H and Mustard Bath, is in development on an English-language feature film adaptation of one of the oldest and most diabolical of Quebec fables, The Legend of Rose Latulippe (working title).

Wasyk has a strong treatment in hand and has applied to Telefilm Canada for development assistance. The plan is to seek production funding this fall, with the goal of shooting the film’s winter scenes in late 2001 or early 2002.

Wasyk says the 17th century period piece will be framed as a contemporary ‘telling of’ story. He says working on the Telescene Film Group/Ridley Scott erotic-horror anthology The Hunger was an appropriate stepping-stone for a project like The Legend of Rose Latulippe, ‘a supernatural thinking man’s horror flick.

‘The story is so embedded in Canadian and Quebec culture,’ he says.

Reputedly of Norman or Breton origin, and first told in the oral tradition in the villages along the lower St. Lawrence, the name Rose Latulippe first appeared in print in Philippe Aubert de Gaspe fils’ 1837 ‘novel’ Le Chercheurs de Tresors. It’s the story of a charismatic stranger on a pitch-black horse and sleigh who suddenly appears at a village Mardi Gras dance on the eve of Lent. The stranger sets about seducing the radiant young Rose, stealing away her soul with a promise of eternity.

Wasyk envisions a six-week shoot on a budget of about $1.4 million

The film is being produced by Wasyk’s Oculus Productions, with Jeanne Ritter (My Father’s Angel, Full Blast) of Domino Film and Television International distributing.

Risky business at SRC

Daniel Gourd, Radio-Canada’s director-general of programs, says risk-taking has led to some of the network’s best new shows in recent years. That’s the theory, and no doubt hope, the program director has in mind for Chick’n Swell, a new low-budget sketch comedy that mixes absurdist humor with comic-book stylings.

The show’s creators, originally from the small mining town of Victoriaville, are Simon-Olivier Fecteau, Francois Cloutier and Daniel Grenier. The trio sent a cassette of their no-budget, club-date comedy shorts to Louise Richer, director of Montreal’s l’Ecole nationale de l’humour, who subsequently passed it along to a number of well-positioned TV execs, who became equally convinced of the group’s potential. Among them were producers Guy A. Lepage (Un Gars, une fille) and Jean Bissonnette, Avanti Cine Video president Luc Wiseman and, ultimately, SRC’s Gourd.

Gourd says production resources were made available so the show has at least the fundamental technical and logistic support needed for primetime TV.

Chick’n Swell airs Fridays evenings. Thirteen episodes are being produced.

In memory of

Gaston Sarault

National Film Board animation producer Gaston Sarault died recently at the age of 81. A painter, filmmaker and writer, Sarault produced some two dozen shorts for the French animation studio, working with directors such as Jacques Drouin, Co Hoedeman, Paul Driessen, Clorinda Warny and Jean-Thomas Bedard.

As a producer, Sarault is associated with what many consider to be the ‘golden age’ of auteur animation cinema in Canada, the 1970s, when NFB-produced shorts were winning awards at virtually all the major international film festivals.

Sarault’s filmography is available at www.nfb.ca/FMT/Fprod/S/Sarault_Gaston *