I spent a strange week in the shadow of filmmaker, writer and cinematographer Claude Fournier, who died on March 16. Monday evening, a very moving tribute evening at the Imperial brought together his countless friends, his loving family, his friends, his allies of yesterday and the day before yesterday. Among them are anti-war protesters picketing outside the Russian Consulate General in Montreal.
Because the nonagenarian, since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, before being too weak to walk, went every day, with his companion, Marie-José Raymond, other members of his family or alone, in front of the building hurling insults at Vladimir Putin, confronting the irate diplomatic staff with their placards and their outspokenness. Indomitable Claude Fournier!
I had known him alongside his wife and collaborator through their body and soul investment in the philanthropic project of Quebecor Elephant: memory of Quebec cinema, which restores and digitizes films from here. Also at the time of filming his documentary on the brilliant and flayed director André Brassard. Disappeared before him, the old accomplice of Michel Tremblay. We bury so many pillars.
Claude Fournier loved vibrant, authentic, passionate beings, outside the nails, his brothers in freedom. A vast friendly spectrum, however, including the former French Prime Minister Alain Juppé, who came to testify the other evening about his links with the deceased. Also the former Prime Minister Lucien Bouchard, who evoked with his eyes in the water this memory of having been watched over by the couple during the terrible illness which almost took him away.
Rarely have I heard so many vibrant testimonies of love than during this ceremony. And when the columnist Guy Fournier, his identical twin, spoke of him as his lost half, we felt the amputation of a departure butchered in the flesh and the heart of the survivor. But when Louise Latraverse evoked the talents and manias of this cook, dictator of the stoves, the laughter took over from the emotion.
Because Claude Fournier, there were heaps of them: the lover of his lady, the memoirist, the outstanding cook, the great Proustian, the one who planted trees, the father and the grandfather present or absent. The filmmaker who brought to the screen the marvelous Second-hand happiness of Gabrielle Roy, the man who filmed General de Gaulle’s speech at Montreal City Hall in 1967, the autobiographer of‘By dint of living. And, of course, engraved in the collective memory, the director came to stretch his audience of the 1970s by chasing away the miasma of the Great Darkness with blows of good or bad erotic comedies. Huge Popular Hits: two golden women And The apple, the tail and the pips.
On the Imperial’s screen, a montage of his films awakened bygone decades. The aesthetics and figures of its sparkling wines Puss in Boots (1971) glaringly prefigured those of The little life by Claude Miller. In the nostalgia section, great actors who have since passed away returned for three short tours. And excerpts from two golden womenco-scripted with Marie-José Raymond, invited viewers on a journey through time.
So, I ran Wednesday night to the premiere of the play that Catherine Léger took from this comedy of joyful emancipation. The specter of Claude Fournier floated there more beautifully, but in a playful way, as if to open the bag of tricks of his legacy.
The frolics with passing men of the two neighbors abandoned by their husbands show implicitly the passage of time. Our era suddenly seems darker to us, but more aware of inequalities than the carefree era that gave birth to the film. The play is light and funny, adapted to the no less delirious stakes of our contemporary contradictions, on a well-oiled staging and minimalist sets.
Exit the housewives of yesteryear in this two golden women take 2. The professional exhaustion of one and the maternity leave of the other explain this time their loneliness and their somersaults. Isabelle Brouillette and Sophie Desmarais, in the lead duo, do not repeat the lines of Monique Mercure and Louise Turcot. Rich and hard-hitting dialogues approach our spirit of the times, but the humor is the same, on a tandem of imperfect, crazy women, attacking persistent prejudices. Because the discomfort remains acute in the face of female sexuality more than half a century after the fire. It’s good to say…
I promise, Claude Fournier! On its release, we will see the feature film adapted from this play by Catherine Léger, under the direction of Chloé Robichaud. Alas! The dad of two golden women will be conspicuous by his absence at the premiere of the film too. It would have made him laugh so much to rub shoulders with it. There’s no justice, come on!