The box in which Claude Jutra's 1971 movie "Mon oncle Antoine" (My uncle Antoine) comes claims that it is "the most honored Canadian film ever." One of 21 films scripted by or adapted Clément Perron (who was born in 1929 and also directed at least 13 movies), "Mon oncle Antoine" is a Christmas (Eve-plus) memoir of growing up in as asbestos-mining company town in northern Quebec, circa 1950.

The opening led me to suppose that the movie was going to be about a miner (a Québecois "How Green Was My Valley," perhaps). The disgruntled employee Joe Poulin (Lionel Villeneauve) soon goes off to logging in the forest. (What should be his most important scene was either cut or not shot!)

I am puzzled that Uncle Antoine (Jean Duceppe) is the title character. The booze-loving owner of a general store is not the most important or most interesting character. His wife, Aunt Cecile (Olivette Thibault) and the head clerk Fernand (played by director Jutra) run the store, and are more important to the "moi," Benoit (Jacques Gagnon) --and to each other -- than Antoine is.

Most of the movie is set inside the store the last shopping day before Christmas. The window decoration is (clumsily) unveiled in the morning, villagers cluster inside during the day, including the relatively chic wife of the local notary (Monique Mercure) whose trying on a new girdle is spied on by Benoit (I think he is an orphan and that the kinship terms are not biologically based, but am not completely sure). Benoit flirts with Carmen (Lyne Champagne) who may be a cousin and seems to have been sold by her alcoholic father (Benoît Marcoux) to the store-keepers.

Late in the day a phone call comes that the eldest Poulin has died. Antoine sets off in a horse-drawn sleigh to fetch the corpse (the store supplies coffins). Benoit wants to go along and Aunt Cecile consents for reasons that may not be immediately clear.

The expedition is a disaster as Antoine is fortified with one or two too many bottles and the coffin is jolted off while Benoit is playing race driver. He experiences more disillusionment on his return.

The movie does not seem to have any particular destination and goes nowhere in particular rather slowly. I think that the performers are generally good -- especially Olivette Thibault --, but the directing is very cliched with way too many zooms in to closeups and totally predictable reaction shots. The most dramatic moment occurs off screen, as I already mentioned.

I guess Benoit's disillusionments of the day and night are an end of childhood, but we don't have any indication of what Benoit is going to make of what he has seen and what he may have learned about those around him.


The DVD includes no bonus features. I don't think (but don't know) that the original was widescreen. The VHS and DVD versions are not. The print transferred was less than pristine and the colors are somewhat faded.

Jutra died in 1986 at the age of 56. Les Prix Jutra is given to the best Québecois film each year and the Claude Jutra Award for best director of a first feature is given each year at the Canadian Film Awards (Genies) "Mon oncle Antoine" won the awards for best film, director, and actor (Jean Duceppe(!his is not IMO even the third best in the movie!)).


© 2008, Stephen O. Murray

This, my second entry to Elvisdo's 2008 Canadiana writeoff is more enthusiastic than my first, the execrable Spider directed by David Cronenberg. "Mon oncle" is not as boring nor as drab as "Spider," but that is very faint praise indeed!





Recommended:
Yes