Arlette’s wager | The Press

Is entrusting the title role of a film to an actress publicly accused of sexual misconduct and racist remarks to a trivialization of the gestures and words for which she is accused? I asked myself the question again this week, discovering the new film by Mariloup Wolfe, Arlette.

Despite Safia Nolin’s denunciation, which targeted the host and actress, the director chose Maripier Morin to portray this stylist, columnist and director of a fashion magazine, propelled to the head of the Ministry of Culture. Mariloup Wolfe did not reconsider her decision after the publication of the investigations of The Press and To have to revealing that other people blamed Maripier Morin for inappropriate racist and sexual remarks, unsolicited sexual touching and physical assaults that took place between 2017 and 2020.

There are many reasons why we will not soon see Julien Lacroix in a leading role in the cinema, Éric Salvail at the animation of a televised gala or Philippe Bond performing on stage, but that we will be able to see Maripier Morin in almost every scene ofArlette, within a week. Unlike others, she admitted most of the facts and misdeeds of which she is accused, she is treating her alcoholism and drug addiction, and she seems to have taken concrete measures so that these behaviors do not recur.

The question remains: could this character have been interpreted by someone else? The answer is, without a doubt, yes.

Maripier Morin is doing well, she is even very fair in emotion, but to claim that no other actress could have embodied Arlette as well would be ridiculous.

This choice, as we say in Chinese, is a statement. Bias. That of the director and the producers of the film. The bias consists in making a clear and complete distinction between the acts committed by a person in his private life and his profession as an artist. Let’s separate the actress and the wife. It is a defensible point of view. Remember that Anne Casabonne, herself a controversial politician, is also part of the cast ofArlettein the role of a journalist…

This bias is accompanied by a bet: that the public will be there despite (or thanks to?) the controversy. I wouldn’t bet on that. And not for the reasons one might spontaneously think.

If the choice to prominently display the name of Maripier Morin in the credits is likely to cause a backlash among some, the thorn in the foot ofArlette is elsewhere: the film is not very successful. Its script is not very credible and poorly put together, with dialogues with agreed thesis (in particular on the relationship to culture and neoliberalism), dramatic pivots without much interest and a plot as exciting as the suspense surrounding the unveiling of a provincial budget. .

The synopsis ofArlette could be summed up as follows: will the new Minister of Culture, an ambitious neophyte who has become the darling of the media, manage to convince the Minister of Finance, an equally ambitious conservative supported by the economic establishment (David La Haye, reduced to caricature), to abandon his idea of ​​a tax on books and to respect his electoral promise to grant 100 million to artists? Sounds like a description of a television news report.

Built like an opera house at the royal court, Arlette has accents from the movie the Comfort and indifference by Denys Arcand (with his references to Prince of Machiavelli). Arlette is the new favorite of the king, in a way. A pawn on the chessboard of the Prime Minister (Gilbert Sicotte, equal to himself), who is preparing his succession.

The film is based on a few ideas that do not hold water. “A woman in culture”, proclaims the title of a daily newspaper after Arlette’s appointment, as if it were exceptional (since the mid-1980s, the portfolio has been held more than 95% of the time by a woman ). He also suggests that it would be unprecedented for a media personality with no political experience to become a minister overnight. Talk to Caroline Proulx.

The presence of Paul Ahmarani, as the minister’s press secretary, reminded me how Mariloup Wolfe’s film suffers from comparison with Bunker, the circusa satirical TV series on the same theme – behind the scenes of power – by Luc Dionne (in which Ahmarani also played 20 years ago).

Inevitably and, we dare to believe, unintentionally, the scenario ofArlette sometimes refers the viewer to the private life of Maripier Morin.

“You are going to be guillotined in the public square,” his chief of staff (the earthy Benoît Brière) told the new minister. We then see her, in her company car, taking the sexist and misogynistic sarcasm of Quebec radio-trash hosts.

A little more and you would think that in the artistic vagueness that the film installs between fiction and reality, we are presented with Maripier Morin as a victim. Whereas if we replaced in this dialogue of radio troglodytes the first name of Arlette by that of Safia, we would get closer to the truth.

In the film, an intoxicated Arlette uses alcohol and her charm extensively to cajole backbenchers into her cause. But she does not end the evening by biting them, slapping them, kissing them or grabbing them without their consent… Of course, Arlette is a work of fiction, not to be confused with reality.

Is it too early for the rehabilitation of Maripier Morin? I wonder what his victims think of it. Nothing prevents her from making films, granting interviews, being welcomed on the set of Sweety salty. It is up to the public, on the other hand, to judge whether they want to see her in this particular role.