Posted at 7:00 a.m.
A quarter of a century ago, almost to the day, Marie-Soleil Tougas and Jean-Claude Lauzon died. At the age of 27 and 43 respectively, in a terrible plane crash in the Far North of Quebec, under the eyes of two friends, Gaston Lepage and Patrice L’Écuyer. At the time, this tragedy shook the province, like “a big earthquake”.
Almost everyone in Quebec remembers the moment when he heard the news, on August 10 (or 11) 1997. To mark this dark anniversary, and out of duty of memory, Jean-François Poisson has just produced Marie-Soleil and Jean-Claude: beyond the starsa documentary recently available on Videotron’s Vrai platform.
In a fairly classic form, the film makes us relive the shock of this accident which remains a mystery. The filmmaker uses images and interviews from the archives, mixed with several testimonies from personalities close to the victims, starting with Gaston Lepage, but also Patricia Paquin, André Robitaille, Guy Fournier, Louise Deschâtelets, Nathalie Petrowski and editor Michel Arcand. People who knew one or other of the members of the couple well. Or both. We also see the brother, Sébastien Tougas, and the mother of Marie-Soleil Tougas, Micheline Bégin, whose testimony is particularly touching of lucidity and benevolence.
PHOTO PAUL-HENRI TALBOT, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Jean-Claude Lauzon, in 1987
A love story
If we already knew a lot of details about the tragic life and destiny of the couple, the documentary reveals unpublished extracts from their personal diaries. Revealing a bit of their beautiful and tragic love story. A story as we sometimes see in the cinema.
Moreover, with hindsight, we imagine Marie-Soleil and Jean-Claude as heroes of a great love movie at the cinema. Characters with an end on a giant screen, instead of a boreal forest, allowing them to join the mythical couples of art history.
Alas! life is not like the cinema…
Why does this extraordinary couple still fascinate and move us, 25 years after his death? Because everyone has exercised a public profession; because everyone has been successful. But not only. There is something very beautiful in the secret of their private life, in the mystery of their relationship, both belated and dazzling. And universal.
Opposites attract
Their age, their personality, their social background, everything separated them. In real life, Marie-Soleil and Jean-Claude were poles apart; like two foreign continents united in their sentimental drift. A gentle young actress, “disarmingly simple”, in love with an angry forty-year-old, full of complexes.
The luminous angel in love with the taciturn demon; this is the portrait made by relatives of the couple. A couple that stays together against all odds. Towards himself.
Disillusioned, Lauzon did not believe in love at all. The filmmaker said that all the couples he met were unhappy. For her part, Marie-Soleil wanted to believe in “a total, pure and great love”. “I would like to live like in a song by Léo Ferré”, she confided in an interview with Marie Plourde, of which we see a brief extract.
A song by Ferré… It made us think of a magnificent song by Marie-Claire Séguin. Jean-Claude and Marie-Soleil were also two children of a crazy century and a crazy dream, such a fragile path and a world to be rebuilt.
Marie-Soleil Tougas and Jean-Claude Lauzon died far too soon. Two bright shooting stars disappeared from the Far North sky, near Kuujjuaq, on an August afternoon on Earth. But we know that the stars die leaving their traces. These two will undoubtedly remain in our collective memory for a long time.
Produced by Attraction, Marie-Soleil and Jean-Claude: beyond the stars is available on True.
Documentary
Marie-Soleil and Jean-Claude: beyond the stars
Jean-Francois Poisson