Since January 2022, the critic at Duty François Lévesque revisits classics from the 7e art who celebrate anniversaries with its series A posteriori cinema. It is published on Tuesday Movie stories, a collection bringing together all the texts from the series, “enriched with anecdotes, comments from experts, quotes from artisans and critics”, including previously unpublished material. His Stories We therefore learn about the films, but also about the critic, who reveals his tastes and obsessions through the tape.
“As a film buff, I have always loved filming anecdotes, stories that allow me to better understand the production contexts. Before starting the series, I offered this type of essay from time to time, always doing in-depth research. I love that. If I had not been a film critic, I think I would have enjoyed the job of researcher a lot,” he confides in an interview given a few days before the release of the book published by Somme tout/Le Devoir.
No less than 39 texts are found in the collection, which covers flagship titles such as the classic Fanny and Alexander by Bergman, the enigmatic Lost Highway by David Lynch, or even Bernadette’s true nature by Gilles Carle. “These are all films that I love to varying degrees,” says the critic. But he, who describes himself in the book as a “child of the 1980s”, does not hide his particular fascination with horror nor his admiration for the filmmakers of the time, such as Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter.
Cinema memories
“My first love, my first memory of cinema, is horror cinema,” he says. When I was five, we watched An American Werewolf in London by John Landis with my brother and my babysitter while my parents were gone. I had all kinds of revelations when I saw this. Then I started devouring everything I could about cinema. As a teenager, I compulsively bought films at the video club in Senneterre, where I grew up, and I was marked by Hitchcock/Truffaut, which I found in the school library. »
“The theme of the series is not “the best films of all time” nor “my favorite films” for that matter,” writes the author in his preface. He is even self-critical: “The number of films directed by men is far greater than that of films directed by women. » Saying he was guided by the “circumstantial dimension linked to the imperatives of the A posteriori series”, he nevertheless recognizes that “men have long dominated, and continue to dominate the profession [de cinéaste] “. His text on The Piano, by Jane Campion, first female Palme d’Or, in 1993, deals precisely with sexism in the industry. “Anyone who reads me regularly knows my opinion on the matter. »
We still find some of his personal favorites in the book. “Write the texts on AND And The Thingit was particularly enjoyable. AND, it’s the first film I saw in the cinema, as a child, in Senneterre. It brought me back to that memory. And The Thing, we kept renting it at home. All plans are impeccable. The special effects are dated, it’s latex from 1982… But the staging is impressive: the compositions, the economy in camera movements, the use of negative space, everything is perfect. »
The critic’s style
Even in interviews, François Lévesque talks about the films he loves with the precision and literary style we know him to have. A style that he owes, he says, to Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert, critics whom he admires and whom he cites in his book. “Roger Ebert was the best-known, most influential critic of his time. It’s a reference that I have always consulted, and to which I necessarily turned here. Pauline Kael, whether I agree with her or not, has extraordinary style. I think that with my sentences that are too long, I’m trying to imitate him, even if I don’t come close to matching him. And she loves Brian De Palma, so I forgive her a lot of things. »
In Movie stories, we therefore read François Lévesque the critic, but first and foremost the film buff, the one who discovered a passion for writing during his master’s degree in film studies. He accompanies his texts with quotations which clarify the filmmakers’ approaches or which highlight the critical reception of the films in their respective times. We thus learn what were the motivations for Mireille Dansereau’s feminist approach with The dream life — unpublished text —, or that Francis Veber, director of Dinner for idiotsfelt snubbed by French critics.
“The idea of rediscovering old films to our readers came from the pandemic,” he recalls. Far fewer films were released and people had become accustomed to using video-on-demand platforms. I had the idea of starting this series to bring interesting films to people’s memories. In my job, this is what is most important to me: sharing my passion. In my reviews, in my interviews, I want to make people love cinema. With this series, I found a way to do it that I really like. »