The series A posteriori le cinéma is intended as an opportunity to celebrate the 7the art by revisiting flagship titles that celebrate important anniversaries.
In her editing room, a director lacking inspiration suddenly sees the face of a stranger on her monitor. Captured during a location scouting session in a hotel that was to serve as a set, this enigmatic woman captivates the filmmaker, who not only goes to meet her, but transfers her personality to the heroine of her feature film, played by a singer-actress who is herself in the midst of an existential crisis. Unveiled in August 1984 at the World Film Festival, The hotel woman is a pivotal film in Léa Pool’s work. Three women on a quest get lost and find themselves there at the same time, their power of fascination revealed to be intact 40 years later.
The film is set in Montreal, where Léa Pool settled in 1975 after leaving her native Switzerland.
At the exit of The hotel womanthe filmmaker describes her three female characters in these terms in The Duty : “They are, so to speak, three archetypes of women. Estelle, played by Louise Marleau, is the most unconscious, more underground, latent part. Andréa, the filmmaker rendered by Paule Baillargeon, is the more active, more conscious part: she is the one who acts, she is the intelligence, the sensitivity. And between these two poles, there is the actress-singer played by Marthe Turgeon and who bridges the gap between the two. She is the most carnal character.”
During a rare interview, Paule Baillargeon explained to us that she had “an understanding from the inside” of her character, being a director herself (The red kitchen, The sex of the stars).
At the time, in Quebec, we were still often in the roles of waitresses and dancers. […] And suddenly we had access to something else.
“In a way, this film was for me. At the same time, I didn’t know Léa that well, but I could see that the film was a good fit for her…”
Paule Baillargeon also highlights the innovative content of the three scores of the film, which did not correspond to the imposed figures, notably of wives, mothers, etc.
“At the time, in Quebec, we were still often in the characters of waitresses and dancers: it was a lot of that, for women, for actresses. And suddenly, we had access to something else. It hadn’t happened to me often to read such an inspiring script. We saw the film.”
And not just any film: “It was a film by a European woman in Quebec,” notes Paule Baillargeon. “Léa filmed with a fresh perspective places that we no longer saw, like the port of Montreal.”
Like an alter ego
The hotel woman was Léa Pool’s second film, after the noted Strass Cafe (1980), an exercise openly influenced by Marguerite Duras. If there are again Durassian accents in this second film, in the exchanges between Andréa and Estelle, the filmmaker multiplies the sources of inspiration. After all, as Andréa declares, “creators are thieves”.
For example, as Louise Marleau reveals to Marie-José Raymond during an interview produced by Éléphant mémoire du cinéma québécois: “ [Léa] wanted to be inspired by Garbo’s silhouette for Estelle. So I wear a wig in the film, which you can’t see. This mysterious woman, this woman who is a little absent from life and things, fascinated me.”
Far from being a simple metanarrative exercise in cinema about cinema, The hotel woman exudes an evanescent atmosphere, somewhere between realism and dreaminess. We are like in a kind of waking dream, an impression reinforced by the superb direction of photography of Georges Dufaux, misty, icy.
This bias, because that is what it is, goes back to the very early stages of writing, even before a story had taken shape. In his 1984 interview with DutyLéa Pool is eloquent on this subject.
“It’s a fairly long process. First of all, images come to me and I gather them together. The narrative writing itself comes later. It’s a bit like a memory that is searching for itself, a dream that we try to remember and whose pieces we want to gather. I accumulate files, photographs, and all of a sudden, blocks and links appear, which become obvious.”
Ultimately, the filmmaker wrote the screenplay with Michel Langlois, in collaboration with Robert Gurik: “At one point, I got lost in this imaginary world; I needed someone to bring me back to a stronger structure and construction. But I didn’t want to stop myself from looking for these images that come from quite far away and quite deep within me.”
These “blocks” and their “images” were thus assembled into a story with varied, rich themes – creation, alienation, madness, desire – which became, for a time, recurrent in Léa Pool’s cinema.
“Desiring subjects”
As for the theme of desire, Professor Josette Déléas addresses it precisely in her analysis of the filmmaker’s first four films, included in the collection Rebel wordsThe author details how Léa Pool presents her female protagonists not as “objects to be desired”, but as “desiring subjects”.
“In four films: Strass Cafe, The hotel woman, Anne Trister And Body and soulshe was able to achieve this by imposing […] an introspective cinema that is only watched to better establish privileged relationships between those it brings into contact with and the spectators who observe them. These relationships are part of what makes Léa Pool’s work unique and gives it its remarkable unity: the intense evocation of passion which, from the incantations of Strass Cafe to the muffled cries ofBody and soulis fatally linked to desire, to suffering too. However, The hotel womanthe second step in this painful but not hopeless journey, marks a decisive and revealing moment in the filmmaker’s creative approach. By being in direct contact with cinematographic art, this film begins a reflection that will continue, illuminated by new flames in the two films that follow. […] As for Andrea, at the moment when her character escapes her, she understands that life cannot and must never be reduced to a hunt for images.
In The hotel woman“the blaze” remains above all of a creative nature. Although the emotion is there, in Estelle’s final words, in her letter to Andrea.
“I’m leaving, you know, without leaving this story. And that’s what I have left […] I think of her often; her, this character that you invented for us. Who steals what, from whom? Perhaps one meeting is enough for everything to become possible again. Thank you for knowing how to hear what was not said… »
Enigmatic words? Not really. As Louise Marleau notes in the interview with Éléphant: “It’s a love relationship between two women that is not consummated, but that is.”
“There is great poetry in this film filled with a love that is not said,” Paule Baillargeon tells us.
Like an echo from the past, Léa Pool adds, 40 years earlier: “These are emotions that are put in place, juxtaposed to construct a sort of puzzle. And, personally, I would like that at the end, the spectator has only one image, one emotion, and no longer knows how to remake the film by reason. […] More than on the cinema, The hotel woman is a film about creation, intimately linked to love, to those encounters that we have in life and which gradually lead us to that something essential that we want to say.
And in hindsight, it seems clear that The hotel woman constitutes “something essential”.
The movie The hotel woman is available on VOD on Illico and iTunes.