No one had forgotten Jean-Paul Belleau. But who remembered how bored the ladies of the heart were, how idle they were once the children grew up?
First broadcast from 1986 to 1989, the soap opera signed Lise and Sylvie Payette rallied its share of nostalgics. Its covers shown from June to October were seen by 46,000 viewers, making it one of the most watched shows of the past five years in the Thursday and Friday slots from 5 pm to 7 pm on ICI ARTV.
So that it is set out again for a turn. Same time, same shift.
On the radio show The evening is (still) young, Jean-Sébastien Girard has said and reiterates all his happiness to follow Ladies of Hearts.
At first he thought he would take a second-degree look at it, laughing a lot. But he admits to having quickly been caught up in the intrigues, despite the improbabilities.
For example, “It’s crazy how quickly the main characters have become successful businesswomen after a lifetime of being submissive women!” “.
The too many times
For memory, Ladies of heart four couples followed. First that of the only businesswoman, Véronique, director of a magazine, who lives in an open relationship with François. Doesn’t he want a child? What does it matter! She will conceive one with a stranger. François will accept this and adopt the child. The other three women, Claire, Évelyne and Lucie, spend a good part of their morning in dressing gowns, drinking coffee and wondering how to occupy their time. Claire starts exercising, Évelyne dusts a lot and Lucie watches television. In their bank account, they do not have a penny, depending on their husbands for their sustenance.
Jean-Paul will cheat Lucie once too often. Illico, she will launch with Evelyne a catering business that will quickly flourish. To the chagrin of Roger, who will not accept Evelyne’s emancipation and their departure from the suburbs.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, LAPRESSE
Monique-Andrée Michaud and her son, Jean-Sébastien Girard, fans of Ladies of heart
Monique-Andrée Michaud watches this with her son Jean-Sébastien and it reminds her of a whole era. “One of my uncles had said to his wife: ‘I’m the one bringing the money, you don’t have a say.’ I had promised myself that I would never make myself live by a man. I studied to become a teacher. ”
My mother did not understand: “You don’t have to go to college, you will find a husband who will support you.” And besides, my husband thought it didn’t look like I was going to work. Let’s see! Like I went to college for four years and then stayed home!
Monique-Andrée Michaud
They divorced “and my father ended up marrying a woman at home, which he had always wanted,” says Jean-Sébastien Girard in turn.
Alienating model
“This generation of women mentioned in the soap opera is the first to have completed higher education and to have the tools that allow them to be something other than mothers and housewives,” underlines sociologist Francine Descarries. Ladies of heart, it is the unease of these petty bourgeois women who had reached a level of education which they did not use. ”
Until then, she points out, women were mostly extras in their families, all focused on the well-being of their husbands and children.
“One of the problems of the feminist discourse of the time, recalls Mme Descarries, is that the women had the impression that they were denigrated. But it was not they who were being denigrated, it was the situation in which they found themselves. It was not easy for them to hear that they found themselves in an alienating pattern. ”
Lack of nuances
Of course, to follow this chronicle of the emancipation of women, it is necessary to accept, says Jean-Sébastien Girard, “a writing which is not too subtle”.
Lise and Sylvie Payette “wanted a TV that educates”, he emphasizes, and that was done in broad strokes.
It was in this soap opera that we saw the first lesbian couple on television. Domestic violence, alcoholism, love within an open couple (a model that has not spread so much, in the end), empty nest syndrome, love that we no longer hope for 50 years are among the many topics discussed.
The characters are without nuances. The snob is really very snobbish, the boss, always straight and all of a unit, Evelyne, a holy woman and Jean-Paul Belleau, the infidel of the infidels.
At the age of 20, the children of these couples are presented as retarded teenagers who have their washing done by môman. “Rock and Belles Oreilles made a great parody of it, with Evelyne breastfeeding her 22 or 23 year old daughter! », Remembers Jean-Sébastien Girard.
Little movement
But above all, we must accept that the scenes last three minutes and that we are the captive witness of housewives doing their “ordinary”.
It was the lot of soap operas at the time, recalls Pierre Barrette, director of the Media School of the University of Quebec in Montreal. “Everything was done in pre-set settings, so for sure there can’t be too much movement and they always eat in the same restaurant. ”
Today, these soap operas have given way to series which are shot like in the cinema, in real houses and in real restaurants.
As for the narrative framework, concludes Mr. Barrette, of course, “we can clearly feel“ the strategy of the finger in the wind ”of authors who are determined to advance their characters” and who will have contributed “to the advancement of a certain feminism ”.