What are tales for? To create fears. To learn life lessons. A little also to lower the level of anxiety when the daily life puts strong pressure on the hearts.
Thus, to reassure her grandson Fred (Oscars Desgagnés), grandmother Bernadette (Michèle Deslauriers) tells her what happened in Saint-Élie-de-Caxton in 1927, when characters as mismatched as the hair on the hair of the hairdresser Méo (Marc Messier) were engaged in a race against… death.
Suddenly, we are propelled into 1927 where anything is possible since we are… in a tale! In the scenario, Fred Pellerin has fun drawing characters moving in a charming setting, the result of the careful staging of Francis Leclerc.
In its first half, the story is splendid, funny, sensible. The characters are well defined. The guideline is clear. We know that in this village where all the individuals are a little cracked, a drama is emerging since lightning struck the apple tree in the central square and made the apples, even blackened, more attractive, but more lethal, than ever.
Fortunately, the same Bernadette (Jade Charbonneau), who was then 20, is smart enough to guess what’s to come. Suddenly, she will seek the help of the Stroop (Céline Bonnier) to literally bend the fate of the village.
All this is presented to us in a bucolic setting mixed with some fantastic effects. One of the best scenes occurs when L’Aracheuse de temps is about to take the life of Junior (Antoine Bergeron), one of M’s 472 children.me Gélinas (Geneviève Schmidt).
Unfortunately, we get lost in scenes with less breath in the second part. The challenge to Méo to cook an apple pie before his own death, Toussaint’s self-promotion campaign (Émile Proulx-Cloutier) for his evening of cards and the sharing of apples in the church seem less in tune with the first part, they are less fluid, less catchy.
That said, the acting is impeccable, especially that of Jade Charbonneau and Céline Bonnier. The latter embodies with aplomb and restraint a modern and mysterious woman, a mixture of witch, Louise Brooks, Amelia Earhart and Calamity Jane.
In the story, Fred Pellerin is at the top of his art in the dialogues and monologues, as when the blacksmith Riopel (Guillaume Cyr), father at the head of a single-parent family, declines his gestures of loving father to his daughter Belle Lurette (Marie -Ève Beauregard). Here is another passage where it is a question of reassuring those around you. Which leads us to conclude that if the film is sometimes uneven in its structure, it hits the nail on the head with its message.
Indoors
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Fantastic tale
The Time Harvester
Francis Leclerc
With Jade Charbonneau, Céline Bonnier and Oscar Desgagnés
1 h 54