Seducing Doctor Lewis

When was the last time that you went to see a comedy and actually laughed throughout the movie?

In this small traditional Quebec fishing port, dying in modern times, the townspeople must band together to "seduce" a doctor into signing a five-year contract. Their ability to do so will enable them to attract a factory to the town, providing jobs for everyone. The doctor they set their sights on is from The Big City, and of course all the townsfolk must collaborate to make their sad little town seem like paradise. The giant scheme leads to laugh after laugh. For fans of the show "Le Plateau" you will see all of your favorite characters.

Similar in theme (small town pulling the wool over outsiders eyes) as in the Irish flick "Waking Ned Devine".

This is one of those films which reminds viewers that the medium can be smart and very, very funny at the same time. Even better, La Grande Seduction manages to make an audience laugh throughout its length without constantly resorting to the tired bathroom, sex or slapstick humour employed in so many other films.

Like the most predictable humour found in modern sitcoms, the laughs are derived from deception in one form or another. Still, the over-the-top means employed and the end itself - convincing a city doctor to reside in a physician-free outport - allows any viewer to simply enjoy what unfolds, and relish both the obvious and the obtuse.

I had the pleasure of watching the movie with my in-laws, and can attest that the guffaws span all ages and can break through any language barrier. Hands down, it was the funniest movie any of us had seen in a number of years. Highly recommended.

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The irony of the situation was that we purchased the DVD just for the purpose of seeing the scenery. La Grande Seduction was shot in Harrington Harbor, an island outport on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which my wife and I had visited earlier this summer. The lovely village connected only by boardwalks and dominated by pedestrians and ATVs instead of cars is surrounded by the wonderful geography typical of the St. Lawrence Basse-Cote-Nord (Lower North Shore). Unsurprisingly, the real but unique location, still a working fishing village, does not have problems attracting doctors or anyone else. The painful part is not being able to stay longer.

"Seducing Doctor Lewis" (or "La grande seduction") is the story of a remote Canadian community, an old fishing town, hoping to seduce a big-city doctor to move there so that a factory will open and take the town's population of 125 people off of public welfare. Following the precedent of "Doc Hollywood" and "Northern Exposure," the film highlights the attractive simplicity of small town life and makes it almost as irresistible to the audience as it is supposed to be to Doctor Lewis. The film has a couple small, but glaring, conceptual similarities to its predecessors: 1) as in "Doc Hollywood," the doctor is a plastic surgeon--i.e. just the sort of person who needs an adorable small town to straighten out his priorities, and 2) as in "Northern Exposure" the doctor is looking at a limited, 5-year stint in the town, something that seems more plausible than seeing a young doctor dedicating his entire future career to a town of just over 100 people. All in all, "Seducing Doctor Lewis" is the seductive little film it sets out to be, nearly mustering a charm equal to "Waking Ned Divine." And one has to admire the filmmakers for sidestepping the potential clichés that the film's ending could have stooped to. David Boutin, also, plays a very likable doctor, while looking strangely like a Dominique Pinon whose body has been stretched to leading-man proportions.

It's good to see a movie that capitalizes on three basic rules: a good story, a good storyteller and good characters. When you get all three in the same movie, you don't need a lot of FX to achieve a good movie. This one has them all and you should simply judge for yourself.

What is it about remote coastal communities that makes them so perfect for feel-good funnies such as these? There's something evocative and atavistic about the sea and fishing folk. Maybe it's somewhere in the roots of all of us, and we never fail to delight in seeing those apparently simple folk, apparently locked into a fading past, nevertheless conspire to outsmart the sophisticated city slicker who comes into their midst. I must go down to the sea again, and even on a balmy Perth summer evening at one of our beautiful outdoor cinemas I could almost smell the cod and kelp and feel the keen north Atlantic wind as it tore through Ste Marie la Mauderne.

The plot was indeed clever and ironical. Dr Chris Lewis was NOT ultimately seduced by cricket, beef stroganoff, fishing, "lucky" $5 bills placed in his path, fusion jazz, nor even the lovely Eve, whom we all thought would prove the clincher in a Hollywood "boy gets girl" finale. No, not at all. He was seduced by the honest and genuine needs of a community who felt the need to resort to every degree of dishonesty to try and win his heart with all those things which ultimately proved trivial.

Congratulations, Canada Francophone, this one was a real beauty. Dix points!