No longer wishing to tell stories of murders or police investigations, Serge Boucher wanted to write a more intimate series, where he would put the human being at the forefront. Directed by Claude Desrosiers and produced by André Dupuy for Amalga, Fragments depicts a group of friends who are reforming 35 years after sad events.
“I’m closing a loop,” said the author during a round table following the screening of the first two of the ten episodes of Fragments. There is a relationship with confession in the theme; I remember Marie-Ginette Guay’s last sentence: “Can we help each other? ”. Fragments, it is the relationship with the other, the other we need to live, the human being at the heart of our lives. »
Young, Jacynthe (Camille Felton), Marlène (Carla Turcotte), Paul-André (Étienne Courville) and François (Alexis Déziel) formed an inseparable group of friends, the Victo quartet — a nod to the masterpiece by Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartetset of four novels (Justine, Balthazar, mountolive and Clea). But life separates people who love each other…
Thirty years later, Marlène (Céline Bonnier), professor of political science, and Paul-André (René Richard Cyr), author of the popular television series Chances, form with Renaud (Luc Guérin), restaurateur, a solid trio who watches over the fragile Tomas (Félix-Antoine Duval), son of Jacynthe, who died a long time ago. Father of Céleste (Schelby Jean-Baptiste), primary school teacher, and Édouard (Irdens Exantus), aspiring artist, François (James Hyndman), surgeon, has just lost his wife, Sylvie (Dominique Leduc). Chance brings François to meet Marlène, his first love, and Renaud, whom he believes to be Marlène’s husband.
“It’s no coincidence that Paul-André’s series is called Chances…”, launches Serge Boucher about his alter ego, who starts writing a novel at the end of the first episode which he dedicates to his “living loves” and his “dead loves”, letting us guess what the future holds for him.
tangible memories
For the purposes of the fiction, Serge Boucher drew on his childhood memories. Thus, the author used the remark of a librarian giving him the copy ofHosanna followed by The Duchess of Langeais which he had commissioned for the scene where François meets Jacynthe, Marlène and Paul-André in the library.
“On TV, we celebrate authors, but authors don’t get wet. So I thought of doing something more personal. The great pleasure of this scene is that there is an element of truth; the librarian had said to me “my God, you’re reading that, you, the faggot at Tremblay!”. Afterwards, we enter the fiction of the characters. »
In order to stage this story of friendship where we pass from the past to the present and from the present to the near future, Claude Desrosiers has chosen to make the characters appear in their memories of youth. “There was a lot of past, and I liked that the present is in the past, that you don’t lose all the energy that the character of the present brings into the past. It’s a way of being very present in the memory,” explains the director.
From the first scene, Paul-André casts a gaze tinged with melancholy on the young quartet which speaks of the future: “The goal was not to bring melancholy, he continues, but a very real side of memory and also to tell the story without breaking. »
With its characters shrouded in mystery, its skillfully fragmented narrative served by a fluid realization and an impeccable direction of actors, Fragments will appeal to devotees of the Boucher-Desrosiers tandem. No doubt many will regret that this may be a last collaboration.
“I don’t see what more I have to say on TV than what I said with Confessions,Appearances, Lights and Brittle, but tomorrow morning I may say the opposite. I’m glad I did what I had to do. I did what my stomach told me to write for TV. I don’t know what the future holds for me, I’m a tired man. »