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Synopsis The story begins in 1923 in Montreal, where the young Albert (Éric Bruneau) turns up unannounced at the studio of Jane Pickford (Andréa Férréol), a drama teacher who confines her training to young women. Fiercely determined to become the next Valentino, he nevertheless succeeds in convincing her to take him on as a pupil. Three years later, the old lady can’t bear to let her only protégé go, and insists that he gives her a goodbye kiss, which proves to be fatal for her. But she hasn’t had the last word for all that, because she will haunt Albert’s dreams throughout his journey across America.
On board the train he takes to Los Angeles, Albert gets to know Grace (Émilie Dequenne), a young Mormon rebelling against the traditional beliefs of her father, who has 13 wives and has given her no fewer than 75 sisters. Determined to change things, Grace has founded a protest group and advocates polyandry, the right of women to have several husbands. But that was before she met Albert, who, however, prefers to be unattached so that he can make love to all the women in the world. Thrown off the train by a jealous rival, Albert meets Jack Dekker (Roy Dupuis), a professional golfer handicapped by his fanatical attraction to women, to the extent that he’s wanted in the state of Arizona. The two men have no choice but to cross the desert together, which leads them to making surprising acquaintances, and allows Albert to realise how much he misses Grace. (Denise Martel, Journal de Québec, 9 April 2005) |
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Roy’s fourth film released in under six months! And what a mixed bag! Three years ago he famously made an open invitation in Elle Quebec (May 2002) to auteur film-makers. ‘One of my old pals who makes films said to me one day, “Why don’t you do auteur films?” I said to him, “The offers aren’t exactly coming out of my ears. Give me a call, then I’ll make them.”’ On the evidence of his output since then, we must assume that the phone started to ring … and ring. In 2003 (Marc-)André Forcier won the Albert Tessier Prize, the cinematographic award which is one of the six cultural Prix du Québec, which are ‘the highest distinction awarded each year by the Government of Quebec in recognition of a remarkable career in the artistic and cultural field’. Back in 1994, critic Marie-Claude Loiselle had called him “the greatest Quebec filmmaker of our time”. Notwithstanding his well-deserved reputation as an enfant terrible, surely his cineaste credentials would compare favourably with those mere cinematic enfants, Leclerc and Allen, not to mention that producer of second- rate film fodder, Zaloum? C’est pas moi … c’est l’autre (Zaloum), a comedy of mistaken identity released during the Christmas holidays, was the most successful of the four at the box-office ($676,216). Mémoires affectives (Leclerc), a thriller based on memory loss, won for its director both a Jutra and a Genie. Les États-Unis d’Albert (Forcier), in common with Manners of Dying (Allen), suffered from minimal exposure on its theatrical release, and neither of them have made any money. Danièle St-Denis (author of Dans les peaux de Roy Dupuis and webmistress of www.rdcharacters.com) and Jean-François Brassard (Échos Vedettes reporter) have at least two things in common; I know them both personally through correspondence and visits to Montreal, and, more importantly, they are both big fans of André Forcier. To illustrate how this film seems to polarise opinions, here is what each has to say about Les États-Unis d’Albert, << in my translation – viv >>.
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