Mémoires Affectives

The search for an obscure past

Alexander Turner, aged 41, comes out of a long coma after having been declared clinically dead following an accident on a country road. He doesn’t remember anything or anybody, despite the help of a psychiatrist and the support of his wife and daughter.  After a convalescence in hospital, he goes home to Charlevoix.  In contact with his family, images reappear of a past that eludes him. Disturbing memories of a life which, he hopes, is not his, come back to haunt him.  To discover the truth about his life he must go back to a place he should never return to, at the risk of his life … and his memory.

According to Roy Dupuis who plays the part of Alexander Turner, it is above all a matter of searching for his identity. “At the beginning he’s an ordinary country guy, a veterinarian, with a shady past, who like everybody has some skeletons in the cupboard, family problems, but who leads a normal life. Then he’s a guy who comes out of a coma and goes looking for himself.”

Whereas all roles are unique for Roy Dupuis, playing an amnesiac has allowed him some freedom of interpretation with regard to the fantasy aspect of this psychological thriller. “I spoke with people who had been in a comatose state. On the set I met a guy who had lost a part of his life in this way. I also spoke to doctors who explained to me that comatose states are variable and never the same from one person to another.”

What attracted Roy to the project first of all was the quality of the screenplay, written by Francis Leclerc and Marcel Beaulieu. “At the beginning it was the screenplay that attracted me, I thought the writing was honest.  There was also the music and the character himself, a sort of empty vase which fills as the story progresses.”

Apart from the screenplay, working with writer/director Francis Leclerc also clinched it for Roy Dupuis. “It’s his film, his script. It’s been a good relationship and a good collaboration throughout the filming. It’s been one of the best shoots of my life, due to a great extent to Francis who was very ready to listen; we fed of each other in a way. He has a respect and a very deep understanding of the actor’s craft.”

Even though Mémoires Affectives is only his second feature film, Francis Leclerc is nevertheless a prolific director. Despite his youth he has made around thirty videos, particularly for Kevin Parent, as well as writing and directing several shorts and adverts.

In the case of Mémoires Affectives he teamed up with several people he had worked with while filming his first feature film, Une jeune fille à la fenêtre, which received three Genie and two Jutra nominations in 2001. These include producer Barbara Shrier, screenwriter Marcel Beaulieu and actress Rosa Zacharie, who this time plays the part of detective Pauline Maksoud. Apart from Roy Dupuis, the cast also comprises Nathalie Coupal, Karine Lagueux, Guy Thauvette, Benoît Gouin, Maka Kotto and Robert Lalonde, who all, in some way, form the sum total of the memories of an erased past. Mémoires Affectives is due for release on 29 October.