MONTREAL — The central character in Léa Pool’s Une belle mort wants to reject doctor’s orders and feast — an act of rebellion that propels the darkly comic tale of a dying Quebec patriarch.

‘He likes to eat fatty foods. He loves chips, fries, anything with grease. But it’s bad for his health,’ explains Pool, who directs and co-wrote the script with Gil Courtemanche, who penned the novel of the same name, published in 2006. The $5.4 million film, which wraps the final leg of its shoot in Quebec this month, is a Canada/Luxembourg coproduction that was filmed mainly in Europe.

It’s Christmastime and the father, played by Jacques Godin, is very ill — he suffers from Parkinson’s disease and a heart condition. With his grandchildren and 12 grown children gathered around, he offers some shocking news: ‘He announces how he wants to die. He wants to have a supper of 10,000 calories. He wants it to be festive,’ says Pool.

Half the family wants to let him die as he wishes, while the other camp tries to control his health by monitoring his eating habits. ‘He wants to have pleasure in his last days. He wants to control how he ends his life,’ says Pool.

Lyse Lafontaine — who also produced Pool’s latest feature Mommy Is at the Hairdresser’s and brought Courtemanche’s book A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali to the big screen (Un dimanche à Kigali 2006) — bought the rights to Une belle mort because the subject touched her.

‘It treats aging and death with tenderness,’ says the producer, adding that she wanted to make the film because she is troubled by our culture’s attitude towards old people. ‘They are treated like children. It’s revolting.’

The film is produced by Lafontaine and Michel Mosca of Productions Équinoxe and Nicolas Steil of Luxembourg’s Iris Productions. Une belle mort is the first official copro between Canada and the small European country, which has kicked in 40% of the budget.

Lafontaine believes copros are the way of the future and has joined forces with other prominent Quebec filmmakers such as Roger Frappier and Denise Robert to lobby for more flexible coproduction rules. ‘A Swiss producer wanted to contribute 10% of the budget for Une belle mort, but our government won’t allow it. It has to be 20%,’ says Lafontaine, adding that most European countries allow 10% contributions.

‘We have to diversify our sources of financing because the process to go through Telefilm and SODEC is very slow. And the main option is coproductions,’ says Lafontaine.

Yves Jacques, Aliocha Schneider, Marie-France Lambert, Isabelle Miquelon, Martine Francke and Benoît Gouin round out the cast. Backers include Telefilm Canada, SODEC and Radio-Canada.