Lucy Grizzli Sophie, by Anne Émond | Face to face with cyberviolence

In the disturbing psychological thriller Lucy Grizzly Sophiefilmmaker Anne Émond transposes to the screen The packa powerful play by Catherine-Anne Toupin created at La Licorne in 2018. The playwright reprises her role alongside her stage partners, Guillaume Cyr and Lise Roy.

A career woman in her mid-forties who lost her job in difficult circumstances, Sophie (Catherine-Anne Toupin) is completely destroyed when she arrives at the bed and breakfast run by Louise (Lise Roy), who is hosting her nephew Martin ( Guillaume Cyr), recently unemployed. Through contact with the caring lady and the sensitive thirty-something, Sophie seems to rebuild herself little by little. However, the relationship that develops between her and Martin risks taking them into dangerous territory… and leaving the viewer paralyzed in their seats.

“To shake the cage”

“I love making people uncomfortable!” I love mixing things up so much! It’s my great pleasure! exclaims Catherine-Anne Toupin. For me, theater is not a safe space, it is a place to shake things up. On stage, I have a perverse pleasure, especially when I write a piece and then perform in it, to feel what people receive. What I write is never moralistic. »

“In the test viewings of Lucy Grizzly Sophie, it was vocal. It delighted me to hear people’s reaction, says Anne Émond (Nelly, Young Juliet). It’s not insignificant, this pleasure of making popular cinema when you know that you can reach people and make them react so much. »

Created at La Licorne in 2018, directed by Marc Beaupré, The pack was so successful that a dozen directors expressed their interest in transposing Catherine-Anne Toupin’s play to the big screen. Hired as reader-advisor, Anne Émond discovered the play in the form of a screenplay. The playwright and the filmmaker have been talking for barely a quarter of an hour when the first asks the second if she would like to shoot the film. “A little Monday! “, jokes the filmmaker.

“I met lots of great people,” reveals Catherine-Anne Toupin. We didn’t know each other, but for me, with her sensitivity, with her intelligence, Anne was the right person. She has a similar vision to mine and understands what I’m trying to say. We wanted to balance things between the vulnerability of Martin’s character and the violence of my character. We also wanted to use the codes of the genre, because in the end, making films that no one listens to because they’re boring doesn’t achieve anything. I like people to be entertained, it’s the best way to send a message. If you stay on the edge of your seat from the beginning to the end of the film, you’ll remember it. »

A difficult subject

Admiring the works of Preminger and Hitchcock, Catherine-Anne Toupin nevertheless suggested to Anne Émond, a fan of Fincher’s cinema, to rewatch Misery (1990), by Rob Reiner, Basic Instinct (1992), by Paul Verhoeven, and Fatal Attraction (1987), by Adrian Lyne, to transpose the anxiety-inducing world of his play to the screen. Although we find the influences of these thrillers in Lucy Grizzly Sophiewe recognize the signature of the director of the Loved ones in the way she looks at nature, particularly when Sophie and Martin literally drop their masks in a memorable sylvan scene. “My favorite scene!” », exclaims Catherine-Anne Toupin.

“It’s certain that this story could have happened in Montreal, in three and a half years,” thinks Anne Émond. I love filming nature and we had beautiful filming locations. This whole night scene in the forest was a real joy of staging. »

It’s a film about the subject, but which borrows all the codes of a real psychological thriller. We are in the woods, isolated, it’s a bit gloomy, we wonder who is dangerous… I liked the idea of ​​the game of cat and mouse, of having fun with cinematographic language, of manipulating the spectator who asks himself questions throughout.

Anne Émond, filmmaker

It is also difficult to approach the subject of the film without risking revealing too much and thus depriving the viewer of the pleasure and shock that awaits them. Let us recall, however, that, among the inspirations for the original text, there is the negative reaction of spectators to the (temporarily) violent behavior of Marie Lamontagne (Guylaine Tremblay) in Unit 9, where Catherine-Anne Toupin played Shandy, and the resignation of Ellen Pao, ex-CEO of Reddit, after months of receiving racist and sexist insults on social networks. “It’s the biggest cyberpack in history,” underlines the screenwriter. Although written 10 years ago, The pack remains relevant, especially since the pandemic, the speeches conveyed on various platforms, sometimes under the cover of anonymity, are more hateful than they were.

“It’s completely out of control,” confirms Catherine-Anne Toupin. I deeply believe in freedom of expression, but many forget that your freedom ends where the other’s begins. Thanks to my sister, I discovered what was written in the dark web. »

I believed that the most common violence there was racism. Well no, it’s misogyny, which speaks in an extremely disturbing way about the society in which we live. Besides, we removed racism and homophobia, otherwise it would have been 100 times worse.

Catherine-Anne Toupin, regarding the dark web

“People should not have a bad trip when they see the film, they should not ask their son, their boyfriend, their brother if they are doing that, or their daughter, their girlfriend, their sister if they are correct in the face of that,” she adds.

“I also spent a few weeks on sites for post-production to create the chatroom. You have to be strong! remembers the filmmaker, who left social networks around the time of the release of Nelly. The dark web is roaring around us. What we put in the forum is the tip of the iceberg. We didn’t want to go any further because we didn’t want to convey this word, make it accessible. We wanted it to be striking, but we didn’t go for the most scabrous, most disturbing. »

At the time of the meeting, Anne Émond had just listened to a podcast show on artificial intelligence. According to her, the worst is yet to come: “It is the other drift that will hit us in the face. » “We all know that things are going to go wrong, but we can’t do anything, we are prisoners,” adds Catherine-Anne Toupin. “That’s why we must try to live in peace,” believes the director.

Lucy Grizzly Sophie will be presented at the opening of the Rendez-vous Québec cinéma, on Wednesday, February 21 at 7 p.m., at the Théâtre Outremont (by invitation), and at 8:15 p.m. at the Cinéma Cinéplex Odéon Quartier Latin. In theaters February 23.