Montreal: ‘This is our Titanic,’ says producer Richard Goudreau, president of Melenny Productions, referring to the feature film Nouvelle France, his coproduction with Davis Films (France) and UKFS (U.K.). ‘It’s a great love story with an epic historical backdrop.’

Epic would also describe the $35-million budget, which makes it the biggest Quebec production to date. Five years ago, Goudreau had the idea to make a sweeping historical love story, but it took him a year to find his writer, Pierre Billon (Seraphin), and another two years to secure his director, Jean Beaudin (Le Collectionneur). Billon wrote a drama about the fall of New France, covering a period from 1758 to 1761, while keeping the focus on a love story between an adventurer – who prefers the lifestyle of his First Nations friends to that of his bourgeois family – and the daughter of a miller.

‘The idea is very, very loosely inspired by a real historical figure, La Corriveau – a woman who was put in a cage and hung for killing her husband,’ says Goudreau, on the phone from Los Angeles during the American Film Market. ‘But Nouvelle France is not her story. It’s not based on historical fact or a book.’

Instead, Nouvelle France follows the fictional Francois le Gardeur (David La Haye of Un crabe dans la tete) home to Canada after studying abroad. He rejects his family’s bourgeois pretensions and conventionality in Quebec City and chooses to roam the forests. When his father dies, le Gardeur learns that his inheritance was ill-gotten; his father was involved in unscrupulous deals with the Intendant Bigot (Vincent Perez of Fanfan la tulipe). Le Gardeur then meets Marie-Loup (Noemie Godin-Vigneau of Je n’aime que toi), a miller’s outspoken daughter. Her interest in herbal remedies and her friendship with ‘the savages’ makes her vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft. More importantly, it draws criticism from Father Blondeau (Gerard Depardieu), who struggles to hide his feelings of love for the young woman. When le Gardeur learns that his late father’s schemes will contribute to the fall of New France, he must get to France to ask the minister of the exterior to help his threatened country.

‘Gerard Depardieu was the second person to join me, after Pierre Billon – before all the financing,’ notes Goudreau. ‘This is an actor’s movie because it’s not about special effects. They have to act! I think that’s why we got our cast, like Tim Roth, who plays the British prime minister, William Pitt, and Irene Jacob, who plays Bigot’s mistress, and Jason Isaacs, who plays General Wolfe, and Colm Meaney, who plays Benjamin Franklin. This was made for a coproduction.’

Goudreau got a head start financing his feature by using his performance envelopes from the huge local successes of Les Boys I and II. That delivered $7 million. The rest of the $35 million came from Samuel Hadida at Davis Films, UKFS, Christal Films, Television Quatre Saison, Telefilm Canada, SODEC, The Harold Greenberg Fund and FIDEC gap financing. Lions Gate is selling the film worldwide, excluding Canada, France and the U.K.

‘It was hard to raise the financing,’ adds Goudreau, laughing at his understatement. ‘All my blood is in this project – all of it! It was tough. But I was persistent, and having Gerard Depardieu attached so early was a big help. You really need the big names for foreign investors. That’s why this story is perfect for a coproduction. It will open internationally with these names attached, and we shot in both English and French. We couldn’t have raised the financing if we made this film only in French, which wouldn’t make [historical] sense anyway. Well, it worked. We sold four territories in the middle of the shoot.’

Preproduction began in May 2003, with principal photography starting up in August in a studio in Lachine, QC, where production designer Jean-Baptiste Tard and director of photography Louis de Ernsted recreated La Place Royal, the marketplace in the middle of Quebec City. Other locations included more rural areas of Quebec, namely Lachute, Rodden and Tadoussac, where native villages were recreated, two location shoots in castles in France, and various locations around Greenwich in England.

A long shoot

‘Sometimes, we had over 300 people in costumes,’ recalls director Beaudin, who is soon off to England for the film’s sound editing. ‘Because we were shooting everything twice – once in English and again in French – it was a long shoot. It’s mega-work. The challenge is to keep up the rhythm. But I wasn’t really intimidated by the size of this project, because if it’s $35 million or $7 million, it’s all the same, really. You do the same things. Richard was great. He let me go and do my thing, completely. He took one hell of a chance on this film.’

Neither Gaudreau nor Beaudin ever envisioned this project as a miniseries, despite its sprawling subject matter: ‘Television is too reductive for the story of Nouvelle France,’ clarifies Beaudin. ‘And Richard is a theatrical [movie] producer.’

But is he a producer with a political agenda that could exacerbate tensions between Canada’s English and French?

‘There is no political message. We aren’t trying to portray the English soldiers as ‘bad’,’ Goudreau says. ‘General Wolfe won. I can’t change that. The French gave this country away. If they had fought, America would be French today. That’s history, and we used three top historians to make sure we were correct in our interpretation. But nobody’s guilty. We’re not separatists. This is a love story, with a factual historical background. It has national appeal because it’s the story of our country, not just Quebec.’

While Nouvelle France won’t be ready to screen at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Gaudreau hopes it will premier at the Toronto International Film Festival this fall before it opens across Canada in November. Lions Gate will take promo reels to Cannes, however, to begin worldwide sales.

Although best known for the blockbuster Les Boys comedies, Gaudreau does not consider Nouvelle France an enormous change of direction.

‘Before Les Boys, I did seven or eight family films,’ he explains. ‘The big box-office runs in Quebec started with Les Boys, and nobody questioned if I should do it after making family films. Nouvelle France is just another great story. Whatever the topic, I always fall for the script first.’

-www.christalfilms.com