Quebec-Montreal will surely go down as one of the year’s happy cinematic surprises, both with Quebec audiences and the Genie jurors, who have voted it in as a nominee for best motion picture, achievement in direction, editing and original screenplay.

Director Ricardo Trogi says his first feature film ‘is a drama disguised as a comedy.’ On a narrative level, it’s a story of nine young adults – friends, lovers and a couple – in four cars, who undertake a 250-kilometre road trip along Highway 20 from Quebec City to Montreal. On another level, it’s a sobering expose of how difficult it is to believe in the human emotion called love. The film’s outlook is not entirely defeatist – at least the characters are willing to get up off the floor and try again.

Nicole Robert of Montreal’s Go Films produced the film, and Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm distributes.

The movie’s gritty, not very PC dialogue attracted a lot of press coverage – notably the young male characters’ frank and not-often-heard observations and dialogue about women, intimate relations and love. It’s delivered with humor, but the pervading sense of spontaneous truthfulness gives it a decidedly rougher edge.

Trogi says Quebec-Montreal ‘represents our vision of relations between men and women at our age [basically the Gen-X crowd, 27 to 33]. It was one of the ‘musts’ for us to [describe] the guys as they talk to each other in real life. We left it raw and it worked well.’

Trogi says Gen-Xers have always had a lot of choice, being the first generation wired to cable TV with clicker in hand, or ready to change school courses at the hint of a new challenge. ‘And it’s the same thing with girls – in love, when we’re with someone after a time who isn’t quite the right one, we switch.’

The players, with some theatre experience but no previous major film or TV roles, include screenwriters Jean-Philippe Pearson and Patrice Robitaille, Stephane Breton, Isabelle Blais (nominated for Savage Messiah), Francois Letourneau, Pierre-Francois Legendre, Julie Le Breton, Benoit Gouin, Brigitte St-Aubin and Tony Conte. ‘Most of the cast had worked with me on my short films so they knew the tone that I wanted for the film – a realistic [style] of performance. I don’t like over-acting,’ adds Trogi.

Steve Asselin was the DOP and the nominated Yvann Thibaudeau did the picture edit.

‘I think a lot of people recognized themselves in these quests for love with ordinary people who aren’t heroes,’ says producer Robert.

Quebec-Montreal was shot over 23 days in August and early September 2001 on a budget of $1.9 million, which the producer says ‘was comfortable for a first work in mini DV.’ Financing sources include Telefilm Canada, SODEC, broadcaster Radio-Canada, AAV and the tax-credit programs.

The film was not really shot along Highway 20 between Montreal and Quebec but on a rented, closed-circuit seven-kilometre oval test road near suburban Blainville, with some footage of real access and exit ramps, and exteriors in east-end Montreal and Quebec City.

The experience using a two-camera mini DV PAL setup was both positive and negative, says Robert.

The shooting phase was definitely positive, but problems emerged at the post-production stage, with the transfer to film and with sound and music, specifically because of PAL’s 25 frames per second capture rate.

‘We were less satisfied with the final product on film. Mini DV blown up on very large screens [results] in a certain lack of definition that gives the impression that it’s out of focus, very soft. But it was not our cameraman who was out of focus but the [format] itself, which still has its limits,’ she says.

The movie was shot mostly in the interior of the traveling cars with two-camera rigging. It took from three to five hours every morning to install the camera rigs, and Robert says the job would have been even more complex using film. ‘We shot continuously, almost never shutting down the cameras. With film it would have been too expensive.’

The screenwriters, including Trogi himself, had worked together for years on short films. Much of a year passed from draft through rewriting to the final version. Trogi’s short film credits include Il tango della neve, Viandes et substituts and Second Chance, presented at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. Six years ago, he wrote and directed the medium-length drama C’est arrive pres de chez nous.

Based on exhibitor demand, distrib AAV increased Quebec-Montreal’s Aug. 2 release from 20 to 40 prints. The film, with no established marquee names in the cast, preemed at the ’02 Comedia/Just For Laughs film festival in Montreal, going on to earn $500,000 in its first month of release. The near-final box-office tally is $900,000 after 17 weeks. The movie’s appeal, noted one industry observer, clearly surpassed the storyline’s ‘twentysomething’ demographic. Commenting on the performance, AAV president Guy Gagnon calls it ‘an incredible surprise.’

Robert (Karmina 2, Betty Fisher et autres histoires, La Vie, la vie) and Go Films are currently in post on Eric Tessier’s supernatural thriller Sur le seuil, also distributed by AAV.

Trogi has two or three notions for a follow-up feature but is not yet at the screenwriting stage. He’s writing a short film he intends to shoot in the new year.