La Presse at the 47th TIFF | The grand slam of Stéphane Lafleur

(Toronto) Ten years ago, there were seven Quebec feature films in the program of the Toronto International Film Festival. The previous year there were nine. Last year, on the occasion of a reduced edition – pandemic obliges -, there were only two left: drunken birds by Ivan Grbovic and Maria Chapdelaine by Sebastien Pilote. This year of “return to normal”, the TIFF has selected only three.

“There was a time when it was almost automatic to find yourself in the TIFF program with a Quebec film. It has become much more difficult. I’m all the happier that the film is presented there”, confides to me Stéphane Lafleur, who presents his film viking this Sunday, in the competitive Platform section.

The Coyotethe second feature film by Montrealer Katherine Jerkovic, will also be screened on Sunday in the Contemporary World Cinema section, which also hosts Falcon Lakethe first feature film by actress Charlotte Le Bon, whose world premiere took place in May at the Cannes Film Festival.

This is not Stéphane Lafleur’s first visit to the Toronto Festival. He was welcomed there for the first time in 1999, at the age of 23, with a student film, Karaokee, which won Best Canadian Short Film. Nine years later, Continental, a film without a gunwon the award for Best Canadian First Feature at TIFF.

“I have a long history with TIFF. Despite the size of the event, [les programmateurs] succeed in maintaining real contact with the filmmakers,” says Lafleur, who salutes Steve Gravestock, veteran of the TIFF team and champion of Quebec cinema, who is bowing out this year.

Thanks to the world premiere selection of his fourth feature in Toronto, Stéphane Lafleur completes in a way a grand slam of the four major film festivals on the planet. Continental, a film without a gun premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2007, On familiar ground at the Berlinale in 2011 and You sleep Nicole at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014.

The author-filmmaker (also singer of the folk group Avec pas d’casque) is aware of the importance of these major events in the trajectory of his films. “I don’t make movies with big stars. That they are presented in the big festivals then makes it easier for them to follow the circuit of the little ones, “explains the 46-year-old filmmaker to me, spending six days in the Queen City to promote vikingwhich will be released on September 30 in Quebec.

The premise of his first film in eight years is as original as it is intriguing. David (Steve Laplante), a physical education teacher, volunteers to participate in the Viking Society’s first mission to Mars. He will not be sent to the red planet, but will have to form with four other Quebec volunteers a team B of alter ego of real astronauts.

They will live the adventure for more than two years in parallel, thanks to a simulation in a remote bunker in an arid landscape of the American Midwest. Their confidential mission: to anticipate and attempt to remotely resolve the tensions, frictions and other interpersonal problems encountered by the real team of astronauts.

For the purposes of this “mission to Mars for the poor”, they must be synchronous, even in their interactions. This is how David becomes John, Marie-Josée (Larissa Corriveau) becomes Steve, and the character played by Denis Houle (Monsieur Craquepoutte in the youth series Knock Knock knock), a young woman nicknamed Liz…

No wonder the TIFF team jumped at the chance to present viking, as soon as the film was ready in August. This bittersweet tragicomedy, in the usual quirky tone of Stéphane Lafleur’s films (which he co-wrote this time with Eric K. Boulianne), is abundant, captivating and subtly subversive.

Beyond the delicious comic absurdity of its narrative framework, viking explores not the confines of space, but of human psychology, from certainty to disenchantment, passing through all stages of doubt.

Steve Laplante is excellent in the role of David who, if not an astronaut, aspires to become John Shepherd’s perfect understudy. He will take – more than others – to this particular game, revealing parts of his psychorigidity.

In his always inventive and neat staging, Stéphane Lafleur offers nods to science fiction cinema, in particular to 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick, dreamlike sequences and visual games linked to the red planet. The result is frankly pleasing.

Quebec in Toronto

There are distributors who don’t want to show their films at TIFF. Drowning in a sea of ​​American and international films does not seem very interesting to them. Many filmmakers, on the other hand, want this prestigious presence for their film in one of the major film festivals in the world. Everyone has their own interests. They are sometimes divergent.

Among the three Quebec feature films in Toronto this year (not counting Rosethe first feature film by Métis filmmaker Gail Maurice, who lived in Montreal in the 1980s), we find The Coyotethe second feature film by Quebecer Katherine Jerkovic, who won the 2018 Canadian First Feature Award at TIFF for Roads in February.

This is the story of a Montrealer in his fifties, of Mexican origin, who wants to find work as a chef after having had to close his restaurant, Le Coyote. He pays his rent by doing housekeeping at night in companies, then sends CVs. We gradually guess the reasons for his setbacks when his daughter, with whom he has broken ties, introduces him to her young son, whom she would like to entrust to him.

Jorge Martinez Colorado, who we saw in the TV series Raspberry timeaptly embodies this immigrant torn between his professional future — he was offered a tailor-made position in La Malbaie — and his new responsibilities as a grandfather.

It is a poignant and sensitive portrait of Quebec immigration, made up of scenes from everyday life, that Katherine Jerkovic offers thanks to this contemplative and minimalist film. A film that draws its inspiration from the reality of Montreal, presenting characters that we still see too little in Quebec cinema.