This year, twelve short and feature-length Quebec productions and co-productions are presented at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). What beautiful and good. This is especially the case with regard to the coyoteby Katherine Jerkovic.
This is the second film by the Quebec filmmaker, whose career is intimately linked to TIFF. Indeed, in 2018, his film Roads in February there won the prize for best Canadian first feature film. the coyote turns out to be a work of continuity, and that is a good thing in this case.
“The film has been finished for barely a month, reveals the director in an interview. I didn’t expect it to unfold so quickly. I feel privileged to return to TIFF. I received a warm welcome there. I felt that my film had its place and its audience there. Moreover, the public of the festival is very generous: the rooms are full. I remember, at the time, I expected not to see a cat at my screening, then to stroll quietly from film to film, but it was full, and I was then very busy. No doubt it will be the same with the coyotewhich premiered on September 11.
Set in Montreal, the film stars Camilo (Jorge Martinez Colorado, seen in the series Raspberry time), a Quebecer of Mexican origin. A maintenance employee at night, Camilo, in his fifties, once had a restaurant of his own: Le Coyote. For reasons that will gradually be revealed, he has lost everything except his love for cooking.
Now, at the very moment when an acquaintance offers him to move to La Malbaie in order to resume his job as a chef, Camilo sees his daughter Tania (Eva Avila) reappear. Drug addict, Tania says she wants — for the umpteenth time — to become clean. To do this, she wants her father to take care of young Zachary (Enzo Desmeules Saint-Hilaire), a grandson that Camilo did not know he had.
Pieces of inspiration
For memory, Roads in February recounted the happy but modest reunion between a young Quebecer and her grandmother in Uruguay. Once again, therefore, the director is interested in the bond that unites children and grandparents.
“I have witnessed more than once situations where a parent is missing, and where grandparents take over. It’s a phenomenon that is rarely discussed in the cinema, it seems to me. Grandparents bring a lot of positive things, for example in terms of transmission. They can be a real lifesaver. »
The idea for the film goes back about ten years, and involves a patient writing process interrupted for about a year and a half by Roads in February.
“ Roads in February was a minimalist story. It had depth, but was simpler in its dramatic workings. There was an autobiographical side, with a alter ego… the coyote also contains personal elements, but distributed among the different characters. I was a child raised by a fairly single mother who worked nights. I was also a young mother haunted by this feeling of never being up to the task… And even if it is inspired by people I have known and know, I also identify with Camilo, with this desire to starting, starting over: at several times in my life, I changed countries, and I had to make decisions with important consequences. »
As for the other characteristics of the characters, they echo what Katherine Jerkovic has observed in those around her over time. For example, Tania is partly based on two drug addict acquaintances: one made it, the other didn’t. Camilo, this neophyte grandfather, for his part took shape during the stays of the filmmaker in Mexico, where his mother now lives.
I have witnessed more than once situations where a parent is missing, and where grandparents take over. It’s a phenomenon that is rarely discussed in the cinema, it seems to me.
As Roads in February, the coyote proves to be moving, even poignant, but never yields to sentimentality. We are in nuance, restraint and accuracy. “It’s the type of cinema that I like to see and that I like to make. I have respect for the viewer and I don’t want to impose feelings or opinions on them. As a viewer, I feel a bit attacked by a film that tries too hard to make me feel this or that emotion, to make me cry; I don’t feel respected. There must be a distance between the work and the spectator so that the latter can really feel things. It is fundamental. So for me, it’s as much an ethical choice as an artistic one. »
Knowing this, it is hardly surprising when Katherine Jerkovic sets out the main questions that bother her during the writing process.
“I always ask myself: is it an easy choice? Am I going into clichés and stereotypes? These are questions I constantly ask myself. I am very rigorous in my writing: I put time into it, I take it over, I refine it. This way I know I have a solid base to build on. During filming, it allows me to let myself go, to let myself be surprised. »
Something different
When asked what state of mind she is in as the TIFF premiere approaches, Katherine Jerkovic confides: “The adventure of making a film is what allows you to move on from in relation to certain questions. Writing and making a film, it allows you to move internally, to keep moving forward. It means that once finished, you already feel far from the film, you’re somewhere else. I’m away. I’m working on another project… But when I look back, I think I made a good movie. Or finally, a film that brings something different to Quebec cinema. Between the first draft ten years ago and the finished film, I recognize the work I wanted to do. I recognize the images I shot. The soul of the project has survived this long process. It gave a melancholy film, but luminous. »
This is a description, like the writing of Katherine Jerkovic, very accurate.