The contemporary reality of Québec reflected in two films

JOSHUA THEN AND NOW (Ted Kotcheff, 1985) and 90 DAYS (Giles Walker, 1985) received so many nominations for Personal and technical achievement at the 1986 Genie Awards that I became curious as to what their importance and relevance might be within the world of Anglo Québécois film. Specifically I was curious to find out how these films reflected the realities of the English community in con­temporary Quebec, from my own subjec­tive viewpoint. Thomas Waugh’s excellent article on the English Quebec cinema (1976-1985), in this April’s issue of Cinéma Canada, already goes a long way towards establishing the perimeters of that cinema. The question then is how do these two films reflect our contemporary concerns and do they really merit so many awards (at least in the eyes of this reviewer).

Certainly JOSHUA THEN AND NOW seemed to me to be a fable about the death of established English power in Quebec. Not at the hands of the Québécois, amusingly enough, but at the hands of a young Jewish upstart. Mind you, he does not so much defeat the Anglos as assimilates them. Not only have the immigrants taken over film culture in Montréal, as Thomas Waugh has pointed out in his article, but, if one follows the logic of this film/fable, they seem to have taken over English culture altogether. Joshua Shapiro, the film’s protagonist, wins out over the weak progenies of English Canadian culture through his brash opportunism, irreverence, and appetite for life. His soon to be wife, Pauline’s Anglo husband self-righteously adopts leftist causes and renounces his inheritance (material and cultural). Her brother is not only a snob but is also completely unable to make a success of life outside the protected con­fines of his privileged class (i.e. the Westmount English elite). It seems to me that he becomes a central symbol in the film for the inability of this class to adapt to the contemporary world in a Quebec where a lower class Anglo boy from Verdun can become rich, and manipulate him into a position which leads to his eventual suicide. The women marry the new blood (Pauline marries Joshua and her friend Jane marries the boy from Verdun) bringing with them their culture and refinement. Joshua shows off his “golden shiksa” to his Jewish friends. “Dress classy” he tells her, “I want your breeding to show.” The boy from Verdun admits to having followed his wife’s exploits in the society pages for years.

The old senator, Pauline’s father, becomes pathetic in his loss of power. But it is his acceptance of that loss which gives him his final dignity. His hopes, one assumes, now lie in his grandchildren, who through their mixed blood stand to inherit the best of both worlds. This is evident in the last scene, back in the privileged con­fines of the senator’s lakeside home they can listen to and learn from the chutzpah and rich imagination of their Jewish, ex­gangster, grandfather. His discourses on the Bible and its meaning are reminiscent of their father’s, that is Joshua’s, im­aginative recreation of life in his profes­sion as novelist.

Somehow one feels, at the end of this movie, that the lower class Jewish immigrant’s drive and thirst for life has won out over the anemic upper class Anglos, as one of the early scenes in the film predicts. This scene shows the carefully uniformed boys from one of Westmount’s private schools doing their good deeds, collecting junk for the war effort, only to be attacked by a gang of rowdy Jewish boys from the ghetto, who want to turn the junk into profit for their own needs. But, paradoxically, it is Joshua, the Jewish upstart, who ends up having the moral backbone that the Anglos lack. Unlike another similar Jewish hero in THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ (another film adapted from one of Mordecai Richler’s novels and directed by Ted Kotcheff, 1974) Joshua does have moral principles in spite of his amoral background. He won’t take money from women. He won’t steal from his friends and disaproves of the idea that his wife might lie to the jury in order to save her brother. In DUDDY KRAVITZ it is Duddy’s lack of morals which leads to the tragic accident of his friend and the rejection of his Québécois girlfriend. In this film it is Joshua’s morals that are partly the cause of Pauline’s brother’s suicide. I’m not sure what this could signify. Perhaps one can conjecture that there was an element of guilt in 1974, when DUD­DY KRAVITZ was made, in the relationship of the Jewish immigrant, driven by his need to succeed, to the Québécois. If one sees JOSHUA THEN AND NOW as being symptomatic of present day realities in Quebec society that guilt seems no longer present. Rather it is the confronta­tion with the English culture which has become problematic. Who will assimilate who, or which culture has become the dominant one seems to be a central préoc­cupation of the film. Pauline, in spite of her name, cornes from a solid upper class Anglo Québécois background. As Waugh has pointed out in his article, the reflection of Montreal’s cultural conflicts have been portrayed through the bi-cultural cou­ple in other films such as, Groulx’s LE CHAT DANS LE SAC (1964) and Robin Spry’s SUZANNE (1980).

This parable of the death of English power in Quebec from the viewpoint of the Jewish immigrant could have made an involving and powerful film. Unfortunately whoever was responsible as final auteur for this film did not seem to have enough faith in the material to take it seriously. One hesitates to blame either Mordecai Richler, who is given credit for the screenplay, or Ted Kotcheff, the director. However the producer’s (Robert Lantos) history makes me suspect that he might have something to do with it. Perhaps he felt that if sex could sell the American avant garde films in the 60s (Lantos got his start in the film world in this way), sex could also sell Canadian culture in the 80s. The brash sexual humour, and its breaking of taboos, which is so delightful in Richler’s books becomes mere sexual titillation in this film. The film seems to be structured in the manner of Spielberg’s RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, that is as in the old movie serials a thrill is provided every few minutes to keep the audience interested. In JOSHUA THEN AND NOW the audience is provided with a sexual thrill, either ver­bal or visual, to keep its interest. In the serials the purpose of the “cliff hanger” was to ensure that the audience would corne back for the next instalment. Perhaps with an eye to its eventual television release (it was partly funded by the CBC and Téléfilm Canada) these sexual thrills are meant to ensure the return of the T. V. audience after each commercial break. It’s too bad because the story material is certainly strong enough to stand on its own and there are some nice touches in the film, such as the reconstruction of the 40s at­mosphere in the immigrant ghetto around St.Urbain Street. Some of the acting is good as well. James Wood as Joshua is both credible and likeable and is certainly an improvement over the usual nerdish/weakling Canadian hero. But the episodic, subjective narrative structure (most of the film is a flashback from Joshua’s point-of-view) works to keep the drama light and uninvolving. We never stay with any one scene long enough to feel the dramatic impact of the events recounted. There fore rather than being involved in the characters and their dilemnas, the audience is kept at a distance. As Truffaut and Renoir have shown, tragedy and comedy can be mixed in film to give us a deeper view of life. But, in this film the tragedy (such as Pauline’s brother’s suicide and the near break up of her marriage to Joshua) is kept at a distance through the humour, seemingly for the purpose of putting out a better entertain­ment product.

Duddy Kravitz was a tragic hero because it was the flaw within his own character which brought about his downfall. He therefore aroused the audience’s sympathy and pity, and through identifying with him we achieved a certain catharsis. But Joshua is a successful writer who, at least in the film, never achieves these tragic dimen­sions. In the book, Richler has given us a hero who in many ways is as tragically flawed as Duddy Kravitz. The book’s hero is involved in a mid-life crisis which nearly destroys him and his hubris is the cause of much of the tragedy around him. In the film Joshua seems younger and the eraphasis is placed on the cultural conflicts rather than on the conflicts within himself. This means that we are stuck with one-dimensional characters whose fates are ir­relevant to our sympathies. Sexual humour and titillation seem to have been brought in to keep our interest in the film. However a deeper involvement in the main characters would certainly have made a more worthwhile film and would have been a more worthy reflection of Mordecai Richler’s book.

One of the things that stands out when looking at the list of English feature films made in 1985, in Quebec, is the scarcity of women directors. It’s true that there are some women who have directed documentaries but none have directed a feature length fiction film. Whatever the causes of this phenomena we are left with a predominantly male view of the impact of feminism on society. The only exception that I know of is UNSPOKEN AGREEMENTS, a 30 minute film by Marjorie Morton which premiered at the 1985 Montreal Film Festival. This film is a humourous look at how feminism has changed the relationships between men and women, especially in the area of sexual relations. Giles Walker in THE MASCULINE MYSTIQUE (1984) and 90 DAYS also attempts to deal with this area of concern in Quebec’s contemporary society. It is hard to dissociate these two films as 90 DAYS seems to be a sequel to THE MASCULINE MYSTIQUE.

THE MASCULINE MYSTIQUE anounces right from the start that it will deal with the effects of women’s independence on men and we are treated to some anti-feminist jokes. The film is a docu-drama in which a group of men sit around in some sort of group therapy ses­sion and discuss their problems with modem women. 90 DAYS picks up where this film left off. Blue and Alex, two of the men in the previous film, become the central protagonists. Even though there is a confessional tone to the film, since Blue addresses the audience directly, the group therapy, docu-drama format is dropped. Instead we get a situation comedy worthy of Hollywood, both in its cinematic style and in its approach to the problems of life.

Both men seem to get what they were longing for in the first film. Alex gets what he must have wanted – the completely independent women (as opposed to his dependent, restrictive wife). This woman is so independent that all she wants is his sperm in a bottle, even though he fantasizes that she wants his body. To me she seemed the perfect embodiment of the con­temporary man’s fear of feminism – a woman so independent and aggressive that her only relation to a man is to offer to buy his sperm so as to keep him out of the family structure altogether. After all, in this day and age, who needs men? Apparently on­ly women outside of western society still feel that need. For Blue, who in the previous film got dumped by his too in­dependent girlfriend, fills out his fantasies by sending away for a Korean mail-order bride. It seems that it is only in the far east that women are still women and men are… (what?). We’ll never know since they are so far away that the implications of this female role do not have to be recognized. The woman as other, that is mysterious, still seems to be more attractive than the woman who’s just trying to be another person.

As in any situation comedy, it is the basic situation itself which provides most of the comedy in the film. Hyang Sook ar­rives from Korea, and she is a very real woman, not a fantasy. Blue finds himself with this woman in his apartment, whom he knows only slightly, and whom he has promised to marry. Fortunately Hyang Sook is played by Christina Pak with both warmth and a sense of humour. She even has a sense of dignity which gives her character some stature. Perhaps this is what Blue finds disconcerting. He expected a China doll and he does get a person. Finally he does seem to grow up enough to accept this and marry her. Still, I was left with the sense of a lovely, old fashioned girl who will make a lovely old fashioned wife. That is, she will stay at home and cook and clean and take care of the children and not have any stupid ideas about a career or independence or having any sort of a life of her own.

If THE MASCULINE MYSTIQUE showed some of the real pain involved in contemporary male/female relationships, 90 DAYS takes these conflicts into the realm of pure fantasy where the solutions to problems assume a fairytale quality. Ap­parently audiences found the film very funny and I would venture to guess that a lot of their laughter came from the breaking of contemporary taboos. That the director would dare to put such an anti-feminist fan­tasy on the screen is part of the humour. The contemporary Anglo Québécois male’s answer to feminism seems to be (if we are to judge by this film) that “if you women are going to be that way, we’ll get mail-order brides from Korea.” It’s certainly too bad that the women have not had much of a chance to answer.

To sum up, these two films certainly deal with important issues in contemporary Anglo Québécois society. One just wishes they did so more adequately.

Mary Alemany-Galway

Mary Alemany-Galway est chargée de cours au dépar­tement de cinéma à Concordia University. Elle col­labore à Cinéma Canada et est diplômée de l’UCLA (Film Studies).