For five years, Marie Vien, screenwriter of Augustine’s Passion, from Léa Pool, was a volunteer at the Maison du Père. Every Thursday, she served hot meals to the homeless. In contact with these men, “all different from each other”, came the desire to write about them. “One thing that was clear, she confides, is that I didn’t want to film the macadam of the street because we made dozens of documentaries on the sidewalks. Then one day, it’s the epiphany.
“The House of the Father is run by the Trinitarian brothers, explains the screenwriter. One day, I see this larger-than-life character in a white alb, greeting everyone. There, I said to myself that I had the beginning of a premise: and if a street chaplain was struggling with a collapsing church, that he was going to inherit an estate in Bas-du-Fleuve and decide to bring his little one gang close to homeless people? »
To bring to the screen One summer timeLouise Archambault, who cast a tender and sensitive gaze on people who are marginalized in Gabriella And It was raining birdsaccording to Jocelyne Saucier’s novel, seemed the ideal person.
“The screenplay touched me with its humanity. It’s always difficult to broach a subject like that. You can approach it in a dramatic way and go into the hardcore, misery, but Marie didn’t want that. She went there with a lot of humor, but I thought we were going to miss the point. So, which path should we take? says the filmmaker, who salutes the kindness, generosity and talent of the actors, who knew how to find the right tone between humor and emotion.
Lonely, united
If the nuns have no more secrets for her, Marie Vien, who is preparing a third (and last) scenario featuring an idealistic religious character, knows little about the men of the Church. She therefore appealed to journalist Lise Garneau, who died in 2021, who hosted the program of a spiritual and religious nature. Between heaven and earthso that she introduces him to priests.
I knew there was a common denominator to all of them: loneliness. That’s what I wanted to break. We can talk about social housing, poverty, but never, never do we name the word “loneliness”.
“Through these encounters, I built the character of Marc, a man completely of his time, who has a single objective in life: social solidarity. He is a man who has benevolence, without the stupidity of sentimentality, who wants to save several souls at the same time. The men of Marc’s generation are not there to evangelize, they are there for social work. These are the worker priests of the time. »
By getting homeless people off the street, Marie Vien wanted to bring them “to reveal themselves to themselves in contact with nature”. She still had to create the characters evolving around this priest to whom Patrice Robitaille lends his tall stature and reassuring presence. The screenwriter was therefore inspired by people she had met to notably create Madame Cécile (Louise Turcot), a widow who comes to take her meals at the shelter so as not to be alone, and Angel (Marc-André Leclair, alias the drag queen Tracy Trash), the guardian angel of Molo (Pierre Verville), weakened by illness.
“I knew there was a common denominator for all of them: loneliness. That’s what I wanted to break. We can talk about social housing, poverty, but never, never do we name the word “loneliness””, points out Marie Vien.
Of course, loneliness is the lot of itinerants, but in their own way, don’t they form a big family where solidarity is self-evident? “There is loneliness and solidarity, confirms Louise Archambault. I feel like, from what I witnessed at the time, and Marie could say the same, that at some point, you lose everything, you have no home, no family , landmark, help, dignity, so you are without resources, then you are in survival, you protect yourself and you are suspicious of the other. Some may help each other, otherwise there may be jealousy. In the street, it’s every man for himself. »
faces of the street
Join the small band of Marc, assisted by the pragmatic sister Monique (Élise Guilbault), Master (Guy Nadon), lawyer having lost everything at the game, Sam (Martin Dubreuil), soldier suffering from post-traumatic shock syndrome since his back from Afghanistan, Julien (Cedric Keka Shako), Congolese refugee, Sébast (Justin Leyrolles-Bouchard), ex-child of the DPJ, and Miali (Océane Kitura Bohémier-Tootoo), a pregnant Inuit who has just been dumped by her boy friend.
“This social fresco represents the portrait of today’s street,” says Marie Vien. In the street, there is the visible and the invisible. We see those who are begging, who are more poked, but there are other people nearby that we don’t see, like Madame Cécile, Sam or Julien. I didn’t just want to do poqués. There are young people who are not poked and who end up on the streets for all sorts of reasons. »
For Louise Archambault, who called on the director of photography Mathieu Laverdière, with whom she had been able to capture the series of moments of grace that constituted Gabriellait was also important to give a human face to the homeless, to take them out of anonymity.
“One of my favorite scenes is in the van when they leave for Gaspésie. We see each of them in close-up. What I had in mind is that this story begins like this. They are each in their bubble, but little by little there are situations and experiences that weave together and that lead them to develop a friendship, to almost become a family. »
“What I like about Louise is that it’s not intellectualized. We wanted to tell this story organically. Thanks to the work that Louise and the actors have done, I find that we no longer see the costume. Master, we discover him with his raincoat, but we forget him. We forget that they are itinerant. My dearest goal is to forget the face of the itinerant to meet the human. »
Moreover, Marie Vien had so much to tell about each of the characters that she could have made an eight-hour script. Louise Archambault reveals that the first cut of the film took three and a half hours.
“The script was so dense that I wondered what we were going to do,” says the director. We make few choral films in Quebec, because it’s expensive. In addition, Mathieu arrived on the project later than expected, so we couldn’t do any pre-production. I knew we knew each other well enough to find the way to tell this story and highlight each portrait. We had little filming time and we had to deal with bad weather, but Mathieu, who has done a lot of documentaries, is good at reaching out to each person and allowing time for little moments of magic. »
Thanks to the complicity they have developed and their desire to tell this story, Louise Archambault and Marie Vien have managed to tighten up the scenario without the characters losing their humanity, without this enchanted parenthesis that they experience during the a summer loses emotion or humour.
“A lot of work went into that script…and a lot of love. These men and women, I love them and I was happy to take them on vacation. And I think it was natural for Louise to make this film. It’s a great meeting”, concludes Marie Vien.