Achieve confessions, but also embodying Gérald Gallant, one of the greatest contract killers in Quebec (or even Canada), who raged for thirty years, was a major challenge for Luc Picard. How, in fact, succeed in captivating the spectators for nearly two hours without letting the almost soporific personality of the main character take over or tending towards the glorification of the acts of barbarism he has committed?
Certainly in mastering a game of constant balance. Because there is the stuttering Gérald Gallant, rejected since childhood by his own family, a boring husband and a man invisible to society, without any interest. And there is Gérald Gallant who kills his victims in cold blood — remember that he committed 28 murders and 15 attacks, notably during the biker war that shook Quebec in the 1990s — who maintains a relationship extramarital, who is a manipulator believing in his own lies and who does not hesitate to denounce his colleagues to perhaps get out of trouble.
If Sylvain Guy’s screenplay is an adaptation of the investigation Gallant. Coprofessions of a hitman by journalists Éric Thibault and Félix Séguin, published by Éditions du Journal in 2015, the true story screened in confessions grabs all the more because it is fragmented between the present and the past, good-naturedness and abjection, love and death, lies and emptiness.
The frenetic and dichotomous pace of the film leaves no respite to the viewer, who constantly wonders who Gérald Gallant is in the end. A gentleman prisoner of his demons? A bastard pretending to be a saint? A contract killer, quite simply, whom the scriptwriter and the director condemn without appeal at the end of disturbing round trips between the complex psychology of Gallant and the obvious monstrosity of his actions.
To do this, Sylvain Guy (writing) and Luc Picard (interpreting) had access to the long hours of interrogation of Gérald Gallant by the police. And the result is all the more realistic.
The Gerald Gallant Constellation
Of course, the demonstration of the paradoxes of Gérald Gallant would not be so intriguing without the help of the secondary characters created by Sylvain Guy on the basis of real people.
We think, among other things, of the depth of that of Jocelyne Lacroix, the mistress of the ruthless hitman. Thanks to her, we quickly realize that Gérald Gallant is an empty shell, devoid of any empathy. Sandrine Bisson, by the quality of her acting, also allows Luc Picard to be convincing without ever overdoing it.
There is also Gérald Gallant’s accomplice, Dolly, played by David La Haye, an essential character who brings a slight touch of humor and humanity to this black and cynical universe, in the same way as what brings to the story the original — and still remarkable — music by Daniel Bélanger.