“She wasn’t the fat beast that sat us down. The human species is pretentious, self-proclaimed the fruit of evolution, but we all sat down, plumb. Fred Pellerin pokes his head out of the pandemic doldrums with great humility. And if he sat down, too, he was not idle: “Everything we were holding back because of the pandemic. Here we go again. The barriers reopen as the horses come out. “
Back from a tour in France with his storytelling show A village in three dice, The duty met him in a café on rue Saint-Denis, on the occasion of his visit to Montreal. He has before him a Canadian tour with his tales, the release of the feature film The Time Harvester, of which he is a screenwriter, and a reunion with Kent Nagano for a new version of the symphonic Christmas tale. The reason for our meeting, however, is the release of his first youth album, The small boat race, which he holds in front of him, proud and amazed to finally find him in his completed form.
He had initially envisioned this book as a short film, leaving it lying fallow in his bag of ideas. It was during a visit to Rouyn-Noranda, at the heart of a tour, that Annie Boulanger, illustrator, offered to put one of her projects into images. The multi-talented artist reached into his Dropbox and stumbled upon The small boat race, giving birth to their collaboration.
For the occasion, we return to the now renowned Saint-Élie-de-Caxton, where Toussaint Brodeur, general merchant, organizes a boat race every year for the children of the village. They must build their boat themselves, wet it in the flooding of the river, then descend downstream of the stream to the bridge, where the first DIY to arrive is declared the winner.
That year, however, Toussaint came to stack the dice: “Usually, Toussaint puts his intelligence to the benefit of his profit. But there, he takes this same mechanism of misappropriation of funds, let’s say, and he puts it in misappropriation of meaning. The merchant’s interventionism is not without consequences and the race takes an unexpected turn, which upsets the fate of one of its participants.
This participant is Babine: “I was happy to bring it out. Vincent-Guillaume’s interpretation [Otis], in the cinema, was so strong, it seems that after that, I didn’t know which end to take it. The storyteller has a lot to tell about him, but Babine crosses the album almost without a word, firmly rooted in the heart of an allegory as amusing as it is effective.
It must be said that this time, Fred Pellerin, a great blacksmith of the language, was able to rely on the force of the image. Annie Boulanger’s watercolors combine meticulous detail with the softness of familiar beauty. Some of his boards, more dense, deserve our attention for the hilarity they arouse or the trip to which they suit us.
The wonder is ours. This is what I work for. Because I need it. It is too fret what I am offered.
The one that illustrates the display of the Toussaint store is, in itself, a piece of anthology: “Toussaint, for seven shows, for three films… sells lots of business there. Faque we have listed everything he sells: used matches because he tested them to be guaranteed, peppermints, a hard time… Worse from there, we had fun. ”
In addition, the scene on the arrival bridge is a vibrant tribute to Pellerin’s work: “That’s all the characters in all my stories from the start. Tse, Baptiste the seed, it’s there two minutes in We must take the bull by the tales. She didn’t tell me she would do that. the fun that I had to find out! “
Enthusiastic and dynamic, the illustrator would have even taken steps with the professors of Saint-Élie to materialize, next spring, the famous boat race. If this were to come true, the author’s fertile imagination would once again have left its happy imprint on his native village. Despite everything, he remains humble when he discusses his way of bringing Saint-Élie back to the world: “It’s a village that speaks to itself. From the moment it tells its story, it is already happening in the mill itself. It grinds itself, worse it comes out in direct flour. Faque you are not made to bread, but you have a good bit of fact. “
Whether he is a lighting designer of hidden legends or a sculptor of monuments of his imagination, the artist does not seem to have delivered the last batch of bread offered to him by Saint-Élie. Sleeve raised, he is determined to shake off the torpor of a stunned humanity: “Wonder is ours. This is what I work for. Because I need it. It is too fret what I am offered. “
His imagination at arm’s length, solidarity with his hook and the desire to iridescent colors in his path, this is how Fred Pellerin goes. Thus, in this very own way, he subscribes to this incitement from Toussaint Brodeur: “Miracles, if we want, we are also good to organize them ourselves. “