Avec sa série La plus belle province, le documentariste Guillaume Sylvestre pose un regard parfois caustique sur des communautés et des symboles québécois. Il s’autorise même un épisode sur les Français de Montréal en empruntant les codes du documentaire animalier…
Publié à 10h00
Il y a quelques années, Guillaume Sylvestre a signé un documentaire sur un camping de multimillionnaires québécois en Floride. Le prix du paradis misait sur une narration neutre de Denys Arcand et la musique de Mozart qui, par effet de contraste, soulignaient subtilement ce qu’il y avait de, disons, « particulier » dans cet environnement. « On s’est dit [mon producteur et moi] that there was something to do for Quebec with this kind of treatment,” he explains.
This “something” returns in the form of a four-part documentary series entitled The most beautiful province, broadcast on the Vrai platform, which sometimes takes a quirky look at Quebec. “The idea is to enter different worlds and look under the skirts of our society, in microcosms that may just as well be close to home, such as the French in Plateau-Mont-Royal or the Aluminerie Alouette in Sept. -Islands to create a sort of constellation of what Quebec is today,” explains the director.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Director Guillaume Sylvestre offers the documentary series The most beautiful province.
The discoveries are made through the images, the interviews and the always neutral, but sometimes caustic narration of Denys Arcand, who sometimes says what the film does not otherwise say. That one of the few entertainments left in Shefferville, for example, is “rolling pickup to nowhere”. Or that Aluminerie Alouette products are found in Teslas and beer cans as much as in vegan cookie packaging.
unknown worlds
What we discover, above all, are unsuspected universes. The Sept-Îles smelter at the heart of the first episode is a world in itself populated by enthusiastic non-unionized workers (“They are almost more proud to work at Alouette than to be Quebecers,” observes the director) and machinery gigantic whose ballet is shown on the screen against a backdrop of classical music. The next deals with Shefferville, a former mining town that survives on the Labrador border thanks to the stubbornness of the Innu.
We explore the small northern village in particular through the eyes of two Quebecers “from the South” who left to work there for a few months and who talk about their integration, which was not always easy. “Time passes and it becomes very moving”, judges the director. He thinks in particular of a scene where an aboriginal woman tells her friend that she has white hair — that is to say finer than that of the Innu. “It’s no longer a story of Aboriginals and whites, it’s that of two young women who laugh together and have become very good friends,” says Guillaume Sylvestre. I thought it was beautiful even if the setting of Shefferville can be rough at first sight. »
A “wildlife documentary”
The other two episodes of the series are interested in Beauce (in its characters of multimillionaire entrepreneurs as in its libertarian spirits) and in the French of Montreal. This episode is shaping up to be the scariest of the series.
We treated this film as if we were following lions through the seasons in the savannah. We therefore follow the Frenchman from Montreal who discovers his environment and takes root in Quebec.
Guillaume Sylvestre, director
Aware that he pushed a little in this episode, he justifies himself by saying “who likes well punishes well”. “We must not generalize, but they have such an idealized image of Quebec: wide open spaces, people are nice, etc. And they talk about France as if they had just left Yemen, believes Guillaume Sylvestre. Through their eyes, we see ourselves so idealized that it becomes Walt Disney. And after a few years they are disappointed, the pink glasses begin to change color. »
Whether in this episode or in the others, the director insists that he is never there “to laugh at the world”. We sometimes perceive his smirk, but we do not feel judgment in his eyes, at least in the two episodes that we have seen. “I’m not here to laugh at anyone, but if there’s someone who laughs at themselves or crosses the line to the point where it becomes ridiculous or absurd, I’m not going to be shy to put it to the screen, says Guillaume Sylvestre again. But I do not add a layer when the scene speaks for itself. »
The most beautiful provincefrom Tuesday on the Vrai platform