We cannot blame Denys Arcand for being influenced by the clichés of the day. The filmmaker of Decline of the empire Americanof Réjeanne Padovani and Barbarian invasions has always portrayed its society, its elites and its people without complacency, by pressing on the bleeding wounds.
In his best films, armed with humor and scathing dialogue, he exposed the chains that hold Quebecers to the ground. This long-term filmmaker has the guts to display his positions, even if it means being called a reactionary.
In Will, Arcand without firing a shot attacks the culture of cancellation as well as the grievances of minorities and women who have come to crowd out white men. The latter, disconcerted, lose their bearings. New generations, fighting to defend social rights, are blocking their way. In a press briefing this week, Arcand recognized the complexity of the current debates. Which does not prevent his cinematic satire from lacking nuance. At least he let off steam firmly.
The poster, on which the half-effaced male character appears, already gave the color of this film. Jean-Michel (Rémy Girard, very solid), a well-read and overwhelmed septuagenarian has taken refuge in a retirement home where he intends to end his days watching his world collapse. Great culture, respect for private life, its nationalist dreams disappear from the landscape. Only love can save him. Alas! The irony of the film spares its slightly scratched profile. At the time of Decline, Arcand knew how to make fun of his environment more subtly. Aside from a delicious final pirouette, he laughs less at his sympathetic baby boomer and the sovereignist demonstrators than at their targets. It would be funnier if everyone really took it for their cold.
A fresco on which Jacques Cartier and his armed soldiers encounter half-naked Native Americans triggers the action. The object of the scandal sits in the living room of Jean-Michel’s retirement home, where the director (Sophie Lorain, tonic in the most complex character of the film) sees white demonstrators disguised as Natives storm her building. They protest in English against the stereotypes of yesterday’s work in its representation of the First Peoples. The media and the government will get excited, then turn around like mindless pilot fish.
Will is in line with Arcand’s most popular works: a solid cast, exciting and rhythmic staging, resonant lines. His film bites and caricatures the profiles of the unfortunate. Journalists, politicians, activists go through his mill. But the story is not always well-crafted and excesses fall flat. When Jean-Michel, awarded for his literary work in the “tribute to our elders” category, is pushed around by the other winners (all women) and banned from the microphone by uneducated presenters, the heavy gags provoke embarrassed snickers. Certain meaningful scenes, such as the reunion of a mother and her daughter, are glossed over. Emotion struggles to penetrate the satirical vein.
The main character’s comments mercilessly but rightly mock the decline of French in Quebec, the erasure of collective memory, the alarming specter of censorship, the hypocrisy of our governments and the hysteria of certain media. Arcand could still have better understood the legitimacy of several outcry against social inequalities. He touches on this track almost on the sly. His comedy of denunciation, scented in the last part with rose water, mixes genres while searching for his dose.
The filmmaker, a historian by training who spent time with Mohawks during his youth, feels sympathy for the enemies of the French under the old Regime, proud resistance fighters who were never really subdued. In Will, after Jean-Michel’s investigation in Mohawk land, a great lady of this nation will tell the heroes that the fresco in dispute indeed announces the genocide to follow. The only real but short concession to indigenous demands. Arcand distributes his slaps to some rather than others, thus diluting his charge.
After the screening, the woke and anti-woke spectators will always look at each other like dogs, for lack of having seen a real door of dialogue open. Others will enjoy the entertainment, having fun with the characters’ outbursts, venting through laughter the irritation born from the excesses of the time, counting the stars, in brief appearances or not, in this film. all stars “. From then on, in their eyes, the big sons of Will are they really going to slip away? Its reception will be divided, for sure.