|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The town of Sainte-Marie-la-Mauderne is a small fishing community that’ll have to reinvent itself or die a slow economic death after changes in the industry choke out a generations-old way of life. To land a factory (and the jobs it’ll provide), the remote Quebec islet must first lure a physician from Montreal and sign him to a five-year contract, or so goes the flimsy premise of Jean-François Pouliot’s warmhearted comedy. David Boutin’s title character is a fast-living plastic surgeon who once removed from his trophy girlfriend, cellular signal, and cocaine supply mellows out and learns a few life lessons. As striking as Boutin is (he calls to mind a young Klaus Kinski), the film belongs to Raymond Bouchard as Germain Lesage, the grizzled, beer-swilling mayor who hatches the harebrained scheme to make Lewis’s stay so intoxicating he won’t want to leave. He persuades the townsfolk to provide for their guest’s every whim and even goes so far as to tap the good doctor’s phone. That’s one of the more unsettling turns in the film, but otherwise La grande séduction is, in its own innocuous way, seductive. In French with English subtitles. (98 minutes)
BY TOM MEEK
|
