I read again The Plouffes, by Roger Lemelin, at various times in my life. Always amazed by the relevance, the flavor and the twists and turns of a work that foreshadowed the great awakenings of Quebecers. This time, frantic searches in my libraries came to nothing. On which shelf was the novel hidden? Nor here! Nor that way! Might as well buy it again! The young bookseller laughed at the claimed title. Perhaps it evoked “ploufs” in his eyes! splashing the cover. A flagship work is not much, come on!
Personally, I find this Plouffe family as colorful, emblematic and zany, decades earlier, as the Paré de The little life : a mother guardian of traditions, an Anglophobic father allergic to the monarchy, four grown children with loves and ambitions thwarted by the spirit of the times! All crowded together making a lot of noise. Soon, war will set the old countries ablaze, sucking the youngest into its whirlwind.
Roger Lemelin, before climbing his gentle slope towards the beautiful neighborhoods of the upper town, had grown up in the working class environment of Saint-Sauveur. His own childhood rubbed off on that of the Plouffes. Through his characters, the writer has depicted the state of our society in his times and places. Once upon a time, in Quebec…
“When we’re from the lower town / We’re not from the upper town / There are some who remember it / Others who don’t remember it,” sang Sylvain Lelièvre. Lemelin had not misplaced his own memory…
From one adaptation to another, in radio novels, in television novels and in cinema under the label of Gilles Carle, performers have rendered the truculence of the members of this family, from the end of the 1930s to the Second World War, in a Saint-Sauveur withdrawn into himself. But many were already dreaming of the sea air. The ferment of the Quiet Revolution was rearing its ugly head. Nationalist fervor was gaining momentum. Union struggles clashed with sermons from priests. Recluse women accepted their fate or balked. Their men contested clerical power or not. This novel, a true avant-garde song published in 1948, will have brilliantly exposed the soil on which Quebec modernity was born and the demons that still gnaw at it.
“There is no room anywhere for the Ovide Plouffes of the whole world! »: The response of Ovid, the intellectual son torn by his religious vocation, by his burning (but necessarily guilty) desires for the beautiful Rita Toulouse and by his misunderstood passion for great music, remains one of the most famous in Quebec cinema. The fact remains that it was, initially, literary. We had the opportunity to make it resonate within oneself in front of a dog-eared page of the novel, by echoing its cry. This sentence has not aged. The thirst for culture reaps, today as yesterday, collective sarcasm. Do societies really change, beyond all the twists and turns of their journey? Prejudices against art and the desire to access cultural foods other than the small bread to snack on are becoming entrenched in the kingdom of Quebec. It’s good to say…
But I like to hear in what intonations the interpreters of the formidable character of Ovide Plouffe deliver the cult reply.
At the Denise-Pelletier theater, we happily find this universe embodied. The Plouffes by Isabelle Hubert, directed by Maryse Lapierre, was launched in 2020 at the Trident in Quebec, in the cradle of its origins. Here she is in Montreal after Covid delays. Finally !
What an ardent, moving and well-crafted piece! Served by 14 interpreters, all excellent. Those who sing hit the right note, and the musical part in several scenes adds an unusual dimension to the family closed session. But how to deploy crowd movements in the theater? Sacrificed here, the famous procession of the Sacred Heart during the conscription controversy, which Gilles Carle had taken so much care to film. Otherwise, Lemelin’s little world teems, amuses, touches and makes you think on stage as well as on the airwaves and on the screen.
Rare phenomenon: over the generations, all the adaptations of Plouffe will have been great successes. The latest avatar, this widely awarded play, thrilled the spectators of Quebec. In the metropolis, we now applaud him in concert, all audiences combined. It goes to show that the irony of Roger Lemelin, the acuity of his view of his little half-tamed, half-roaring clan, continues to inspire creators with works that make the collective fiber vibrate. What if the Plouffes had remained somewhat our contemporaries? Troubling hypothesis which would explain their fascinating longevity.