L'initiation

There's not much to recommend about this dull movie, unless you are someone who can never see too much nudity. That's not to say that this is some brainless fleshfeast, because in fact it is a well-intentioned story of a young woman who learns some valuable life lessons after meeting a famous author. Unfortunately, the result is terribly predictable and rather boring, as it drags out a simple story and makes it an hour-and-a-half yawner. To be sure, I've seen worse, but it certainly wouldn't take any effort to find something better.

A young women getting ready to enter the university is depressed over her unsatisfying sexual experiences with boys her age and is unable to follow the path of her free-spirited, bed-hopping best friend. She becomes enamored with an erotic book called "L'Initiation" and has a chance to meet the married French writer when he comes to her university. Much May-to-December softcore sex ensues.

This is French-Canadian director Denis Leroux's color follow-up to his first "maple syrup porn" film "Valerie" and it pretty much has the same strengths and weaknesses of his earlier black and white effort. It looks pretty good and the girls are very attractive (I was obviously born 15 years too late and too far south). Danielle Oiumet, the lead in "Valerie",this time has the supporting role as the promiscuous friend and again shows no indication of the wretched performance she would give in her most famous film "Daughter of Darkness" (she's quite good actually). Best of all, the film is pretty classy--it has the class, if not necessarily the intelligence, of Radley Metzger films, and it's visually much more appealing than the sleazy, pimply, sweaty grindhouse crap they were making south of the (Canadian) border at the time. The story is told from the girl's perspective, but it avoids the old feminist saw where the young girl is impossibly naive and the married, older man is a moustache-twirling villain whose only motive for having the affair is casual sex (and apparently being too cheap to get a hooker).

Unfortunately though, there's generally a lack of character development period. And the movie has the same unbelievable fairy tale ending as "Valerie" where nothing is resolved so as not to let reality intrude on the male sex fantasy. And the general lack of anything very dramatic happening may actually make some long for the pimples-and-pathos of the Harry Novak-era American softcore films (or better yet the butter-and-pathos of the more famous older man/younger woman film "Last Tango in Paris") It's really a matter of your personal taste I guess.

I saw the film "L'Initiation" one late Friday night on television and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. Granted, it is not a masterpiece of cinema. The plot is simple and the English dub from its original French language does not help much. Nonetheless, what I thought was going to be a dumb, cheap exploitation "skin flick" turned out to be a decent film that had a good chemistry between the leading characters (The teacher and the student), and erotic scenes that were tastefully done. I also found the leading actress, Chantal Renaud, to be quite talented, photogenic and appealing; she brought a sense of honesty and true tenderness to her character which, in my opinion, these types of films usually lack. By this promising performance one wishes she had acted in more films. I don't know if this title has ever been released on video, but if it ever is I would like to see it again, especially in its original French sound track.

This is a film that is more likely to be watched by Canadians interested in the development of the Canadian film industry (and in particular that of Quebec) than by movie fans from other countries. It would probably not be easy to find an English language copy of this film as a home video today. Most viewers regarded it as a pleasant little potboiler - fairly competently made but of no great importance. Only to Canadians, especially those from Quebec, would this assessment seem inadequate. Canadians have always been very concerned about protecting their cultural heritage. They share a 4,000 km. land frontier with the U.S.A., which has a population almost ten times larger and cultural values that are propagated very vigorously. Most TV programs and movies seen in Canada originate from the U.S.A. and many Canadians fear this will lead to U.S. cultural values gradually supplanting those indigenous to Canada. This fear may well be misplaced; most countries with their own cinematographic industry would admit that, despite competition from Hollywood, it is stronger today than it was 50 years ago. Financing for many new movies is generated through international consortia, equally ready to support appropriate projects regardless of their geographical location.

There is a trend towards the development of common cultural values throughout much of the world, but this is primarily a consequence of increasing population mobility which is gradually making ordinary citizens more conscious of their international heritage. This trend is inevitable, but can seem very threatening where there are linguistic differences and where scientific development and trade considerations lead to intense pressures on minority language groups. Native French speaking North Americans are now a small minority everywhere but in Quebec where they show immense concern to protect their French speaking cultural heritage. Until recently the Quebec film industry was quite parochial and paid little attention to the international distribution of its products. This changed suddenly with the unexpected success of Valerie (1969) which led to thoughts about the Quebec movie industry producing films for a world audience to support both the culture and the economy of the Province. The film L'Initiation, also set in Montreal, was planned and produced immediately after Valerie. In the hope that it would be extensively shown in Europe a French actor (Jacques Riberolles) was brought in to play the leading man and, as in Valerie, the traditional Quebec patois was not used. It was released with all the cast speaking pure European French, and a dubbed version of the film for the English speaking world. It would probably have taken an earth shattering film to meet the expectations, and this film proved to be an international flop - it did not even become readily available on videotape in most non-French speaking areas. This forced the Quebec film industry to scale down their expectations and to recognise the inherent limitations the relatively small French speaking population of North America impose upon it. Many very noteworthy Quebec films continue to be produced, but the expectations that existed when L'Initiation was shot have largely been abandoned. It follows from this that the film was of more importance for its role in shaping the Quebec film industry to the form it has today, than for its role as a work of art.

The film features a pleasant and quite well acted romance between a young University student in Montreal and a visiting tutor from France who is a well known author. Victoire enters into a liaison with Gervais despite knowing that he is married, and learns some important lessons about life from him before he returns to France. (This reverses the more common theme of young male teenagers being helped to reach maturity through the affection of more experienced girlfriends which can be found in such films as "My Tutor" or "Y Tu Mama Tambien". Unfortunately for my sex I have to admit that in "L'Initiation", unlike the other two films listed above, these lessons were not all deliberately and carefully taught by someone whose sole objective was to help their partner reach maturity.)

Although the acting in this film was competent, the dubbing of the English speaking version was only very marginally adequate, and we are left with a quite well made film that was very successful in Quebec but had little impact in Europe or English speaking North America. After I first saw L'Initiation, I enjoyed it enough to make a videotape copy from a television showing. This sat in a drawer totally forgotten for quarter of a century until a recent visit to Montreal brought it to mind. I have now converted the videotape to an advertisement free VCD and am happy to have this in my film collection; but had I not still had this videotape I would have been unlikely to undertake a long search for a replacement. Had DVD's existed when L'Initiation was released, it would probably have had a modest success in a bi-lingual version with alternative soundtracks. I would still like to have a copy in this form, but I doubt whether the cost of re-working it would be justified today.

Granted, the basic story line of this movie is not much more than ordinary. However, this movie becomes interesting when one listens to the ideas and the dialogues the characters dish out trhoughout the film. Basicaly, you've got all the basic guidelines of Quebec's "Révolution Tranquille" movement, stated with little bias. This is a good movie for somebody who would like to understand where the present Francophone culture, in Quebec, came from. That movie was made at the height of the movement, and are expressed with almost no alteration to their original form. Being a francophone myself, I still have trouble with the fact that they try to have a French-from-France accent trhoughout the movie, as if it validated and gave a sense of intellectuality to what they were saying.

Anyways, good movie, Every Quebec Resident should watch this movie, for fun or a better understanding of the people we live with.