First original series from screenwriter Anita Rowan and director Jeanne Leblanc, Eyes closed stars Magalie Lépine-Blondeau as high school teacher Élise Dénommé who, nearly 30 years after the suicide of her older brother, Simon (Léokim Beaumier-Lépine), seeks to understand what drove the teenager throwing himself into the river.
“I wrote this story about mourning when we entered a pandemic, says the screenwriter met during a press briefing following the screening of the first two episodes. When I think back on it, I had the set up perfect because there was a lot of mourning to do during this period. A month before the pandemic, I had given birth, so I wrote the series with this newborn in a kind of cocoon where I reflected on grief, even if it was an experience that I had not never lived. What struck me when I saw the series was how much it is also a Polaroid of an era. It moves me to see how much life has changed in 30 years. »
While her mother, Lorraine (Anie Pascale), with whom she has had a strained relationship since the departure of her father (Patrice Dubois) and the drowning of her brother, refuses to return to the subject, Élise moves heaven and earth to clarify the mystery, after having found on his windshield, the day after the reunion of Simon’s cohort, an anonymous note: “We all played a part in Simon’s death. Some more than others. »
“It’s also the sale of the house that brings things back to life at Élise,” explains Magalie Lépine-Blondeau. There is a desire to understand what leads someone to psychological distress, loneliness, isolation. What animated us enormously, Jeanne and me, it was the step of the surviving child. Finally, the evolution of the family, that of his mother and his own evolution, has as it were stopped with the death of Simon. Everything is therefore somewhat frozen in time, like the house. »
While rummaging through the deceased’s bedroom, untouched since that fateful day in September 1994, just a few months after the shock wave caused by Kurt Cobain’s suicide, Élise finds logbooks that her brother wrote at the request of the pastoral animator Philippe Drolet (Benoit McGinnis), now bishop. Who is the person designated by the initial M. with whom Simon had an appointment three days before his death? What role did Philippe play with Simon?
The past comes back
Available from Thursday on ICI Tou.tv’s Extra, Eyes closed navigates fluidly between the 1990s and today. Present in both eras, Anie Pascal and Benoit McGinnis had to spend respectively four and three hours in make-up each day. A third character from the past should also appear later in the series. As for Élise as a child, she is played by Laurence Ménard, in whom Jeanne Leblanc detected the same spark as that in Magalie Lépine-Blondeau’s eye.
“There are things that came from my own family photos, reveals Jeanne Leblanc, who shares the same year of birth with Simon, 1978, and undoubtedly musical tastes. In the artistic direction, it requires a lot of preparation, even when you know the era well. With the director of photography François Laplante-Delagrave, we made sure that we had a slight difference in colors between the eras. The heat was not quite the same, the sounds were different, that of cars for example. It’s the accumulation of these little details that gives us a surge of nostalgia. »
There is a desire to understand what leads someone to psychological distress, loneliness, isolation
Produced by Fabienne Larouche, who also reviewed the script, and Michel Trudeau for Aetios, the series is available in six one-hour episodes, a format that is popular in England and that Series Plus imposed in Quebec from the first season of Plan Bin which Magalie Lépine-Blondeau played.
“For me, it’s an attraction,” says the actress. I really like this format. The fact of knowing your full curve, of knowing that you will be able to complete the personal story of the character within six episodes, is like another way of conceiving the work. It’s very nice. »
“I could agree with this direction as far as the production is concerned,” adds Jeanne Leblanc. We know where we are going. The thread to pull, we know it and we pull on it knowing that it will elevate us. In finesse, we get closer to the film. »
“As an author, I found it to be a privileged format because I know that I give everything. In six hours, there is no room for downtime. We’re all basically demanding viewers, so we wanted it to be satisfying until the end. I wanted to make the viewers work, to put the pieces of the puzzle together. I hope everyone will be held in suspense until the end. Because what’s worse than investing six hours and being disappointed by the end? concludes Anita Rowan.