Quebec-Montreal | Twenty years later on the 20

Twenty years ago, on August 2, 2002, the first feature film directed by Ricardo Trogi was released, Quebec-Montreal. A scathing comedy about male-female relationships, filmed in five cars on Highway 20, from the capital to the metropolis. A critical and popular success (1.4 million receipts), crowned in 2003 with four Jutra awards, including those for best screenplay, best director and best film. A look in the rearview mirror with two of its co-writers, Ricardo Trogi and Patrice Robitaille.

In the summer of 1999, on the strength of a dozen short films and a remarkable participation in The world destination race, Ricardo Trogi was to produce with his friends Patrice Robitaille and Jean-Philippe Pearson a mockumentary for Télé-Québec. But after seeing the first images of a provisional montage, the producer thanked the three friends without further notice…

Finding themselves stuck in the water, without a contract for the summer, the trio decided to dust off a concept from Robitaille for an experimental feature film, which they imagined to be filmed in real time in a single car between Quebec and Montreal.

“I saw it as a sequence shot with a camera in the car and an improvised scenario around a canvas. The guys would have gone to pee in Drummondville and we would have continued filming without them in the car! “recalls the actor laughing.

“When he told me about it the first time, I didn’t turn on the light. For a first film, being caught in a tank is not what made me dream from a visual point of view”, admits Ricardo Trogi, whom I met last week at Radio-Canada, the place of our very first interview, in 1994, for the race (the subject of the next film in the series nineteen eighty one).

Yet it was Trogi who brought the project back to life, when he imagined ellipses and stories that could be told simultaneously. The trio got to work, exchanging ideas, lines and firecrackers. At the time, Robitaille and Trogi were practically neighbours, rue de Rouen. In the fall of 1999, the first draft of the script for Quebec-Montreal was ready.

“We had written stories for 17 cars, but we reduced that to 5 because we saw that the idea did not hold water! says Trogi. He and his co-writers wanted to recognize themselves in the cinema. To hear the language and the concerns of his generation, the one who was 25-30 years old at the time, on the big screen.

“This film, we wrote it a lot in reaction to what we saw and what we heard at the cinema in Quebec, he says. It was often in international French. The films were made to be presented in Europe whereas in Europe, it is not the language which is spoken. It was nonsense. We wanted to present the language we speak every day. Our big battle horse, that was it. »

A critical and popular success

The trio offered their screenplay to producer Nicole Robert (GO Films), with whom Trogi had collaborated on the aborted project to adapt the novel. The sand swallower by Stephane Bourguignon. “Distributors weren’t very interested in our project,” recalls Patrice Robitaille. In my memory, Nicole had made an agreement with a distributor, offering him a film with stars that could sell more easily. In return, the distributor agreed to take this project of young unknown creators. »

These young creators would not be unknown for long. Quebec-Montreal, hailed by critics for its audacity and inventiveness, garnered 1.4 million at the box office. The next film scripted by Trogi, Robitaille and Pearson, Biological clockwhich hit theaters exactly three years later, has racked up a phenomenal $4.4 million.

Beyond its success, Quebec-Montreal above all revealed a generation of talented artists (actors, authors, playwrights, directors) who have had a profound impact on Quebec popular culture over the past two decades. Whether it’s Trogi’s projects on TV (The Simones) and at the cinema (1981, 1987, 1991), the work of Robitaille on stage and on screen, and the plays and series of François Létourneau (The invincibles, Black sequence, That’s how I love you), who plays one of the main roles in the film.

They were, for the most part, between 26 and 32 years old when the film was released and were taking their first steps in the cinema: Trogi, Robitaille, Pearson, Létourneau, Pierre-François Legendre, Julie Le Breton, Stéphane Breton. Isabelle Blais, who won the Jutra prize for best supporting actress, had barely more experience and Benoît Gouin, the famous “Michel Gauvin / Mike Gauvin” of the film, arrived in the game after studying medicine. .

We discovered the “Quebec gang”. Some, like Robitaille and Létourneau, had known each other since CEGEP, where they had done theater. Most of them, including Trogi, Pearson, Legendre (and others, such as Rémi-Pierre Paquin) met at Laval University, where they did improv.

“I didn’t hire any strangers,” says Trogi. I knew Isabelle Blais because she studied at the Conservatory with Patrice. Rémi-Pierre, Martin Laroche, who were also in our gang, auditioned for roles, if I remember correctly. I was happy that people thought the actors were good, even if they weren’t known. »

They were indeed all very good, even in the more secondary roles (Catherine-Anne Toupin and Geneviève Rochette, in particular). “There is a lot of luck in having met talented people. But I also feel like there’s something stimulating about being surrounded by talented people. So much the better if what we did had resonance,” says Patrice Robitaille, whom I reached on the phone when he was going to pick up his children at the summer camp where they had spent the week, in the region of Quebec.

“It’s like in That’s how I love you ! says Robitaille. At the same time, François Létourneau, author of this delirious Radio-Canada series, was making the same trip from Montreal to Quebec to find his own children at the same camp. You can not make that up.

What has aged badly

What has aged less well than the acting are the images of Quebec-Montreal. The film was shot on MiniDV, like previous Trogi shorts, including It happened near us, about a serial seducer (Robitaille) who talks about his conquests. “If I had to do it again, I would do it differently,” admits the filmmaker. “It’s the technical support we had, with few resources. It’s dated, but that’s life,” adds Patrice Robitaille. The film is found on no distribution platform, only on DVD.

Has the subject aged badly? The film stages male characters who do not present themselves in their best light, a constant in the collective work of the “Quebec gang” (both in Quebec-Montreal thatBiological clock Where The invinciblesfor example).

Twenty years ago, the film was hailed above all as a breath of fresh air in the Quebec cinematographic landscape, with its incisive and frank, funny and acidic dialogues, which testified both to an era and a generation. . It’s not for nothing that Quebec-Montreal was the big winner of the Jutra Evening in 2003.

“I have the impression that we saluted the audacity and the courage of speaking out,” says Patrice Robitaille about the awards won by the film. We weren’t really aware of it and that was good. Otherwise, speaking would have been a bit forced and that’s something I like less. We wanted to say things, but the message was not too frontal, to use a fashionable expression. »

The actor also believes, with good reason, that this comedy was “the bridge between the popular and the most intellectual”. We remember some memorable scenes.

My favorite being the one where the character of Pierre-François Legendre wants to go to the “Indian”, where gas is cheaper, which causes the exasperation of his girlfriend (Julie Le Breton), a breakdown and the dissolution of his couple.

“I pretend to believe that Quebec-Montreal has given certain authors the taste for writing in their own language, says Ricardo Trogi. It’s a tone that I found elsewhere later. But I have no other claim! »

After their two films scripted with six hands, Ricardo Trogi moved on to solo projects, Patrice Robitaille was in demand from all sides as an actor and Jean-Philippe Pearson settled in the Florence area, in Italy, where he still lives. . “We wrote to each other just last week,” said Robitaille.

The trio had no concrete plans to work together on another screenplay. “We could have bet on us more than that, but we wanted to see what the others had to offer us,” said Trogi. That said, I’m sure if we did a sequel, the audience of Quebec-Montreal would be there! That is self-evident.