Taking the pretext of new appointments to the Order of Arts and Letters of Quebec, The duty invites you into the imagination of artists whose exemplary work promotes culture.
“I’m not dissatisfied with what I’ve achieved, with what I’ve been,” says Paule Baillargeon, staring at a ray of light where a small cloud of fine dust flutters. “I wrote three books. There, I hope to be able to publish one more, with the drawings that I have made in my life. »
Actress and filmmaker, Paule Baillargeon would have liked to be able to devote herself more to painting, drawing and graphic arts. As soon as she talks about it, her gentle face lights up. “I would have liked to be a great painter. I realize that today…”
In boxes placed at his feet, dozens of notebooks, filled with drawings of all kinds. “When I was little, I wanted to draw. My mother told me: “so it’s valuable that you don’t have a talent for drawing…”. I must have been 8 or 9 years old. It all ended there! It took twenty years, then, before I allowed myself to start drawing! »
Paule Baillargeon, born in 1945 in Val-d’Or, Abitibi, emerged from the turbulent world of the 1960s with the deep conviction of wanting, as an actress, to embody characters that touch the heart of being. “I started out as an actress. I thought it was the business of my life. I did it. »
Another era?
From 1969, she was an integral part of the Grand Cirque Ordinaire adventure, a collective theatrical experience conducted in the company of Raymond Cloutier, Suzanne Garceau, Guy Thauvette and others. “It was terribly difficult. We invented everything… And I learned everything there. »
“I was an actress. I shot movies. I had the appetite to accomplish myself. But I still have the feeling that I was not at the right time. What era would she have wanted to live in? Silence. The answer will not come.
In the cinema, the public saw her both in August 32 on earth (1998) than in Rejeanne Padovani (1973) and Jesus of Montreal (1989) by Denys Arcand or in Three times after Anna’s death (2010) by Catherine Martin.
As an actress, she says she became disillusioned very early on, when she became aware of the limited possibilities available to her in the heart of Quebec cinema. “When I started playing, outside of the Grand Cirque, I realized that wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to play a dancer, a waitress… That’s what Quebec cinema at the time offered. It can be very, very good. I have no objection at all. But I didn’t want that… When you realize that you will never play in a Jean-Luc Godard film, to give an example, when you realize that you have desires that will never come true, you become disillusioned …I’ve done things. Good things. I am aware of it. But I didn’t fulfill myself as an actress. »
behind the camera
Very quickly, Paule Baillargeon goes behind the camera. “I started making films. One night I dreamed of a girl. She was dressed in force, there, in front of me… I woke up. I immediately wrote a note so as not to forget what I had just seen in my dream. ” It will be Anastasia Oh My dear (1977). “Le Grand Cirque gave me $5,000 to do this. It was good, I think. The film tells my life, but without it appearing. The film, she says, is to be set in the spirit of South American magical realism.
She will then shoot under the aegis of the National Film Board. “I wasn’t a documentary filmmaker at all, but the NFB asked me to shoot. However, she regrets, “from that time on, I was never accepted by SODEC again. [l’organisme subventionnaire québécois] to make an author’s film. I couldn’t really continue my career as a filmmaker, at least not as I would have liked. »
What animated him? “I was a feminist. But I never said that I was going to make a feminist film. Because after that, there is nothing more to say. If it’s just a feminist film, then you can’t talk about the film, the form, the framing, the cinema! But for her, form is everything. “The subject, we can do anything with it. The form interested me and still interests me a lot. Perhaps more than anything else. »
Paule Baillargeon says she still sees Pasolini’s films with delight. ” The Gospel according to Saint Matthew, plans are simple. Pasolini made his film debut. He didn’t really know what to do, I think. So everything is so simple. And that’s what makes his images strong. It leads us to a sublime truth. She talks to me. It’s the same thing, for me, in front of films by Kurosawa or Tarkovski. In the cinema, I like the shot, the setting…”
Of shadow and light
She read. And she’s seen a lot of movies. His eyes now leave him. Paule Baillargeon is ill. She talks about it gently, without pretense. His body no longer obeys him as before. She revisits her life. These are memories of childhood that are projected more than ever in her. “I’ve always been drawn to really dark things. Black. The fear. It comes from afar. I realize that. »
In Abitibi, his father, a lawyer turned judge, had bought a house that was the home of a former gold mine boss. The abandoned mine was located right next to it. “I spent a lot of time, on the way to the mine, staging myself. I ventured into the trails, all alone. I was going to the mine. Who could I have bumped into? It was very early on that she forged dark images that marked her. “If my mother had known what I was lying around…”
Sent by her parents as a boarder at the Ursulines in Quebec, she was attacked by a priest, a friend of her father who was authorized to come and meet her during the week, in the visiting room, under the distracted supervision of the nuns. “I wrote a text that relates this story. He kissed me, not roughly… Then, I found myself in a situation that I didn’t understand. I had been kissed by a man, by a priest. So inevitably, I had sinned… I was living in it… This story repeated itself, throughout my life. It’s not rape. But it was systemic. These were never consensual situations. My relationship with the world has been greatly disturbed by this. When #MeToo happened, I was so happy. I would have jumped for joy. I would have jumped to the ceiling. Paule Baillargeon told some of her intimate stories in A girl without a gunpublished in 2021 by Editions des Herbes rouges.
She willingly lent her camera to the words of others, while insisting on signing this work in her own way. “If it was not me who wrote the script, I still gave everything I had. I think I’m best known for The sex of the stars (1993), based on the book by Monique Proulx. The movie is good. He was seen a lot. But it pains me, today, to be known above all for that. »
A life is quickly passed, she says. “I want to die soon, but at the same time I want to live. I’m so curious about life, about what’s going to happen… Basically, the regrets I have are those that everyone has, each in their own way. I am an artist from an old era. I did things, even if I thought they wouldn’t be useful, that they wouldn’t be of any use, neither to me nor to anyone. I did things because I felt the need to do them. Quite simply. And finally, people became interested in what I did. People said, “thank you”. »