National Day is an opportunity to celebrate our local culture. Here are some suggestions for series and films loved by our critics and available on the platforms.
Simple like Sylvain (Crave)
Monia Chokri’s third feature film is a film about love, couples and female desire. It is also a look at social divisions and class contempt, through the passionate love story between a philosophy teacher and a very down to earth construction contractor. The extremely mastered direction of Monia Chokri, enhanced with a few retro references, distills a fine poetry of the image. On the other hand, there is nothing Manichean or simplistic in Simple like Sylvain. The film received the César for best foreign film last February.
Marc Cassivi
Happy Days (Crave)
Emma, a young conductor (played by Sophie Desmarais), has a toxic relationship with her father and agent, Patrick (Sylvain Marcel). The opening of a position within a large orchestra exacerbates tensions between them. Emma’s romantic relationship with Naëlle, a cellist and mother of a young boy, poses other challenges. By betting on staying as close as possible to the actors, Chloé Robichaud plunges into emotion. We feel like we’re inside Emma’s head, measuring her hopes and disappointments, guessing at her performance anxiety. To dive with her into what she controls, tries to control, and cannot control. This is what makes Happy Days a cinema object as free as it is moving.
Marc Cassivi
Splendor and influence (Extra from Tou.tv)
The comedy Splendor and influence, which parodies reality shows populated by Sunwing passengers soaked in grocery store drink, is full of comical and scathing lines. It scratches not only the brainless competitors of these popular shows, but also their hosts devoid of empathy, their manipulative producers as well as all their well-known television codes such as ultra nervous cameras, black and white flashbacks, misleading montages. , the moments of false emotion and the twists always organized with the guy or girl of the views. The author Marc Brunet (Like me!, Bobos) spoils itself in social commentary. And it’s really very funny.
Hugo Dumas
Discreet (Extra from Tou.tv)
Discreet is the name of the housekeeping company that employs Macha (Juliette Gosselin) and Gaby (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré), two young women in their twenties assigned to cleaning the offices of a law firm. Following a traumatic event, the two young housekeepers plot to make a lawyer pay for his actions. Written and directed by Juliette Gosselin and Sophia Belahmer, Discreet is a well-crafted thriller – and punctuated with dark humor – about female anger and sorority. There are, in each of the ten episodes, punches that encourage us to watch the series compulsively.
Hugo Dumas
Québec Rock – Offenbach vs Corbeau (TRUE)
Through four 45-minute episodes, full of absurd anecdotes, archival extracts and contemporary testimonies from survivors of this era lived at full speed, Félix Rose recounts the genesis of Offenbach within several rock orchestras ‘n’roll from Montérégie, their ambition to conquer the United States, then their turn towards French influenced by the arrival of Pierre Harel, who deserted the group in 1975, to found Corbeau in 1977 with Willie and Wézo.
Dominic Tardif
Raspberry time, season 2 (Club Illico)
In this second chapter, which begins on Christmas Eve, a few months after the finale of the initial season, authors Florence Longpré and Suzie Bouchard delve deep into the past of the members of the dysfunctional Conley-Daveluy family, exposing several well-kept secrets. Raspberry time, it’s beautiful, it’s touching, it’s comforting and it’s beautifully poetic. Yes, there is drama in the series but never too strong or too heavy. There are evocative silences, magnificent dream sequences and lots of music, oscillating between So Whatby P!nk, and Song about my funny lifeby Véronique Sanson.
Hugo Dumas
IXE-13 and the race for uranium (Club Illico)
For older readers, who still associate IXE-13 with The Cynics and filmmaker Jacques Godbout’s absurdist musical comedy from 1971, forget it. The Club illico miniseries is more like a James Bond-style thriller than funny burlesque. No one rolls their “r’s” in an exaggerated way. This IXE-13 directed by Gilles Desjardins (to whom we owe The countries above) will fall under your cathode mushroom. Seasoned and well-directed actors, punch at the end of the episodes, gripping plot, flamboyant characters, everything works in this intelligent and entertaining work.
Hugo Dumas
The red rooms (Crave)
Thriller with a clinical aesthetic carried by precise staging and an anxiety-provoking soundtrack, this third feature film by Pascal Plante (Fake tattoos, Nadia Butterfly) relates the meeting of two young women, one mysterious (Juliette Gariépy), the other naive (Laurie Babin), obsessed with a serial killer (Maxwell McCabe Lokos). Inspired by the cinema of David Fincher and Michael Haneke, as well as the Arthurian cycle, the director offers a blood-curdling reflection on our relationship to images, our dependence on screens and our fascination with murderers.
Manon Dumais
Beautiful flower (Crave)
Co-written by Sarah-Maude Beauchesne (Fork, Slush heart) and her fiancé Nicola Morel, the comedy-drama Beautiful flower very good to watch. It’s sweet, it’s caring, it’s funny, it’s moving and it’s very modern. The five straight men, late thirties, early forties, that the series highlights do not fall into the “asshole” category. On the contrary. Beautiful flower shows us intelligent and sensitive guys, united by a friendship dating back to high school. And no, no, it’s not cheesy.
Hugo Dumas
This is how I love youseason 3 (Extra from Tou.tv)
PHOTO PROVIDED BY RADIO-CANADA
Sidekicks François Létourneau (Gaétan) and Patrice Robitaille (Serge)
We’ve known for a long time what New York Times has just discovered, either that This is how I love you is a singular, sulphurous, insolent, intriguing and terribly amusing work. Right, hair (and mustache!) in the (powder!) lineage of the films of Quentin Tarantino and the exploded universe of the brothers Joel and Ethan Coen in Fargo. It’s super funny, really tragic and deliciously nono at the same time.
Hugo Dumas
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Surprising Detective (Club Illico)
It is really necessary to add Surprising Detective: The Girl with the Stone Eyes, that’s its full name, to your list of shows to watch soon. Especially if you love Scandinavian thrillers, where sordid crimes shake isolated communities lashed by harsh weather.
Hugo Dumas