La cinéaste Lyne Charlebois fait (enfin) un retour au cinéma avec Dis-moi pourquoi ces choses sont si belles, où elle donne vie avec délicatesse et respect à la relation qu’entretenaient le frère Marie-Victorin et la botaniste Marcelle Gauvreau.
Seize ans après Borderline, où elle illustrait de façon audacieuse, percutante et crue les amours de l’héroïne imaginée par Marie-Sissi Labrèche, Lyne Charlebois va à l’autre bout du spectre de la sexualité. Aux antipodes de Kiki, incarnée avec générosité et abandon par Isabelle Blais en 2008, les personnages de Dis-moi pourquoi ces choses sont si belles vivent des amours bien singulières en communion avec la nature et dans l’amour de Dieu.
« Ce ne fut pas ordinaire ce que vous avez fait là, ce que nous avons fait là ! Ce fut le dernier voile ou l’avant-dernier voile qui tombait entre nous. […] You woke up a woman who was still sleeping a little, and I will never be able to forget that I felt against me the rapid beating of all your intimate flesh. My friend ! My friend ! That we must truly love each other to respect each other in front of this extreme border! », wrote Marie-Victorin, from Cuba in February 1942, in one of the last letters addressed to Marcelle Gauvreau (Letters on human sexualitypresented by Yves Gingras and Craig Moyes, Boréal, 2024).
In fact, the bond which united the man of the Church, author of Laurentian flora and founder of the Montreal Botanical Garden, to the young girl from a good family, who was his student, his protégé and his assistant, was out of the ordinary. Driven by great curiosity, thirsty for new knowledge, the two botanists engaged in research and experiments on human sexuality. In the hundreds of letters they exchanged on this subject, they spoke of anatomy, hygiene, orgasms, menstruation in a detailed, sophisticated, elegant, even poetic manner.
In a completely laudable desire to respect the expression of their love sublimated into a disinterested friendship, to leave the spectator the freedom to imagine what really happened between these two exceptional beings, Lyne Charlebois is strictly bound by the content of their correspondence.
Thus Marie-Victorin and Marcelle Gauvreau address each other with deference and devotion like romantic characters, echoing the mythical medieval lovers Abelard and Héloïse.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY OPALE FILMS
Mylène Mackay and Alexandre Goyette in Tell me why these things are so beautiful
The passionate scientists that Alexandre Goyette and Mylène Mackay play, however, are not paper beings. The first infuses the religious with candor, good nature and quiet strength, and the second, grace, will and skin-deep sensuality in the young botanist. Joining them are Francis Ducharme as the severe brother Léon, Rachel Graton as the envious Rita, friend of Marcelle, Vincent Graton as the understanding father of Marcelle, and Sylvie Moreau as the truculent mother Marie-des-Anges, sister of Marie-Victorin.
Wishing to deliver her own reflections on the nature of love from yesterday to today and to break the rigid shackles of the classic biographical film, Lyne Charlebois interweaves the first story into a second relating to the filming of a film about love. by Marie-Victorin and Marcelle Gauvreau. As they chat with the director (Marianne Farley) and the other actors of Conrad and MarcelleAntoine (Goyette) and Roxane (Mackay) reflect on the brief affair they had.
If the necessity of the mise en abyme remains debatable, the back and forth between the past and the present, between reality and fiction, is done with fluidity, sometimes bringing comical breaks in tone, sometimes subtle shifts where the stories are echo each other.
Beyond the tribute to Brother Marie-Victorin and Marcelle Gauvreau, a great woman who remained too long in the shadow of the great man, Lyne Charlebois testifies to the love that the two eminent scientists had for the Quebec territory. Thanks to the images of André Dufour and Christine Simard, the director displays the Laurentian flora in its dazzling beauty in order to remind us of all its fragility.
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Biographical drama
Tell me why these things are so beautiful
Lyne Charlebois
Mylène Mackay, Alexandre Goyette, Rachel Graton, Francis Ducharme
1:39 a.m.
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