A compelling portrait of life in small town Quebec.
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When I hear a film described as a "coming of age" tale, I usually find a way to get out of reviewing it. Like virtually every film set in high school (Hollywood or independent), I find nothing in the film that even feels remotely familiar.
"Mon oncle Antoine" (1971) is no exception on this front. Benoit (Jacques Cagnon) is a teenager growing up in a rural Quebec town in the 1940s. He works in the general store owned by his uncle Antoine (Jean Duceppe) which explains the title. As in most "coming of age" tales, Benoit finds love, confronts death and is generally horrified at his first peak into the world of fallible, corruptible adults. His reaction to all of this is quite alien to me: a stoicism that borders on catatonia occasionally punctuated by moments of childlike joy over odd things like a trip to retrieve a dead body.
Fortunately, "Mon oncle Antoine" is much more than a coming of age story. It´s also a portrait of quotidian life in small town Quebec with an attention to detail and a sensitivity that is a reflection of the compassion brought to the subject by director Claude Jutra and writer Clément Perron. Most of the men in town have two equally unappealing choices of vocation: lumberjacking, or working in the asbestos mine that dominates the town´s economic and social life. Every day sirens go off to warn citizens that it is time to take cover from an impending dynamite charge.
The film is set in the days running up to Christmas. In one of the pivotal and liveliest scenes, the mine´s English-speaking boss, in lieu of actually providing his workers with a raise, rides through down tossing scraps of meat as gifts to the local children, making him the worst excuse for Santa Claus since Mr. Burns showered toxic waste on the citizens of Springfield at the Christmas parade. Benoit and his friend take advantage of the freedom afforded them by their pre-work age, and throw snowballs at the boss´ horse, sending him scrambling for cover. As the two boys walk through the street, they are greeted by the silent admiration of the adults who can´t risk showing open rebellion to their de facto slave master.
It´s moments like this that make "Mon oncle Antoine" sparkle. Also, though Benoit is the protagonist, many characters come to life vividly in the film: Benoit´s itinerant father, his aunt, and especially Fernand. Played by Claude Jutra himself, Fernand is an employee at the general store who isn´t shy about flirting with Benoit´s much older aunt who is both devoted to her husband and turned on by the attentions of a handsome younger man.
Quebecois cinema is a substantial but insular world. These films often thrive in Quebec but receive little play in any other country, and frequently fail to reach even the rest of Canada. There is quite a bit of bitterness produced by the National Film Board´s perceived failure to provide adequate funding to Quebecois cinema relative to other Canadian films, and even the Quebec filmmakers who do get funded are pressured to make their films more commercial, i.e. less Quebecois. A recent breakthrough provided an exception when the bilingual Quebec crime flick "Bon Cop, Bad Cop" became the highest-grossing Canadian produced film ever. Can you guess what the previous record holder was? I guarantee you´ve heard of it (it was not a Quebecois film). Answer below.
According to André Loiselle, "Mon oncle Antoine" has long been voted as the best Canadian film ever made by Canadian critics. I expect this is because the film evokes such a specific sense of time and place, capturing the essence of a sleepy but thriving town filled with believable and well-fleshed out characters. To my taste, Benoit´s adolescent angst is the least interesting aspect of the film. There are as many potential films here as there are characters and it´s easy to imagine Jutra revisiting the same material over and over with different characters serving as the protagonist.
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