Jacques and November

Jacques and November
Directed byJean Beaudry
François Bouvier
Written byJean Beaudry
François Bouvier
Produced byFrançois Bouvier
Marcel Simard[1]
StarringJean Beaudry
CinematographySerge Giguère
Edited byJean Beaudry
Music byMichel Rivard
Production
company
Les Productions du Lundi Matin
Release date
  • 26 October 1984 (1984-10-26)
Running time
72 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageFrench

Jacques and November (French: Jacques et novembre) is a 1984 Canadian drama film directed by Jean Beaudry and François Bouvier.[2] The film was selected as the Canadian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 58th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.[3]

The film stars Beaudry as Jacques Landry, a man in his early 30s who is dying of an unspecified incurable disease and documenting his thoughts on mortality in a video diary; simultaneously, his friend Denis (Pierre Rousseau) is trying to make a higher-budget documentary film about him.[4]

Critics largely analyzed the film not as focusing on death as such, but as an affirming and uplifting look at the meaning that friends and family bring to life.[5] Although Jacques Landry's terminal illness was not specified in the film, the LGBT magazine The Body Politic reviewed it as an HIV/AIDS allegory, directly comparing and contrasting its views of mortality with the contemporaneous HIV/AIDS-themed documentary film No Sad Songs.[6]

Production

Jean Beaudry and François Bouvier directed and wrote the film. Serge Giguère did the film photography while Claude de Maisonneuve and Bouvier did the video photography. Beaudry edited the film. Michel Rivard did the music for the film.[1]

The film was initially given a budget of $50,000, but it grew to $225,000. $25,000 came from Telefilm Canada and $7,000 from the Quebec Institute of Cinema. $13,000 was used to shoot the film in Montreal over the course of 30 days between 23 November 1981 and 13 September 1982.[7][1]

Release

Cinéma Libre distributed the film in Quebec and it premiered at the Festival du nouveau cinéma on 26 October 1984. It was released theatrically on 1 November.[1]

Awards

The film was one of two selected for the Société générale du cinéma du Québec's annual awards, alongside André Melançon's The Dog Who Stopped the War (La Guerre des tuques).[8] The award's prize consisted of a $100,000 investment in the production of the directors' next films.[9]

The film received a Genie Award nomination for Best Original Song, for Michel Rivard's "Le temps nous dépasse".[10]

Cast

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Turner 1987, p. 392.
  2. ^ Hal Erickson (2015). "Jacques and November". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 10 June 2015. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
  3. ^ Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
  4. ^ "Movie within movie depicts dying days". Toronto Star, May 16, 1986.
  5. ^ "Joyous ode to life in tale of dying man". Ottawa Citizen, May 30, 1986.
  6. ^ "Learning to Talk Life and Death". The Body Politic, November 1985. p. 39.
  7. ^ Pallister1995, p. 5.
  8. ^ "Quebec filmmakers share $200,000". The Globe and Mail, March 18, 1986.
  9. ^ "Quebec directors vying for prizes". The Globe and Mail, March 6, 1986.
  10. ^ "Scorecard of major nominees for tonight's Genie Awards on TV". Toronto Star, March 20, 1986.

Works cited