English title: "Looking for Alexander"

"My name is Alexander Tourneur and I have no idea who I am."

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Movie Reviews Film Festival - Mémories Affectives Faded Past? Written By: Robert Waldman

At The Movies Vancouver International Film Festival Memories Affectives (PG) * * Opening Up! By ROBERT WALDMAN Accidents are things to be avoided. Take the case of a Quebec vet just out to save local wildlife. Weather conditions have a profound affect on a 40 year old family man in Memories Affectives, a spooky thriller from Alliance Atlantis Releasing now unfolding at B.C. Theatres. Lost in a coma makes life cumbersome for Alexandre Tourneur. Left largely for dead thanks to a traffic accident in the country today Alexandre lives day by day cooped up in a hospital. Somewhat abandoned by friends the once upon a time life of the party finally regains consciousness only to learn he has no memory. Officials at the hospital do what they can to piece together what happened that fateful day but it?s quite a hard task. Local police get in on the act to solve a fiendish hit and run with a sexy Lebanese born police inspector turning into perhaps more than a civil servant for this down on his luck professional. Life at home creates even more problems for Alexandre who had a hard time remembering anything. Women create even more problems as he has a wife who may be ripe for some extra marital fun and a teenage daughter somewhat on the rebellious side. Only a partner in business seems to out and out appreciate Alexandre as demons from his past begin to haunt what?s left of his future. Director Francis Leclerc here succeeds in painting a good portrait of a person with memory loss. Sure, this theme has been done before but thanks to a gritty atmosphere and solid acting you feel that sense of hopelessness and claustrophobia that any such victim likely would go through. Unfortunately the directly takes us on a big u-turn without really completing the accident report we all want to see solved. Still, those plot shifts are engaging and really turn this 110 minute story into a haunting vision. Nice shots of the snowy Quebec countryside mesh well with the work of Roy Dupuis (Jesus of Montreal) who does a good job playing Alexandre, a troubled man with bad memories and a bleak future. Trust the psychiatrist to do his best to spark his patient?s mind with Frederic Gilles (The Barbarian Invasions) certainly worth his professional designation. Muted romantic feelings resonate well through Rosa Zacharie as a foreign born police official with Karine Lagueux rounding out the cast a family member seemingly on the warpath. Dark secrets haunt this man?s memories with family being the focal point of the carnage set to unfold. http://www.clubvibes.com/magazine/article.asp?id=2154 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 28th, 2004 Mémoires affectives     Ain't no anamnesis Isa Tousignant       Dupuis: Mmm, quietly deep   Mémoires affectives remembers just how little we actually know Francis LeClerc is a courageous man. One of the province's cinematic relève - a prolific wunderkind having solidly established himself as a prize-winning director of music videos and commercial films before winning accolades for his debut feature, Une jeune fille à la fenêtre, all by the age of 30 - he has notable expectations to contend with for his second feature. Not only that, but Mémoires affectives, starring the eminent Roy Dupuis, is a film about amnesia - not exactly the easiest of challenges in moviemaking, in terms of originality of treatment. As I sat down in a restaurant for an interview with him and Dupuis, I couldn't help but ask what possessed him. "I was never under the impression that my second film was being awaited," he said. "Because as much as Une jeune fille was warmly received by the media, it wasn't by the public. In the fall of 2001, all people wanted to see was Amélie Poulin." Also a film about a young girl's love and loss, you could see how his debut might have been overshadowed. But there is no such risk this time. Mémoires affectives is a haunting, heartfelt rumination on memory and the relativity of perspective. Dupuis' Alexandre Tourneur is revived after a decade in a coma when an unknown figure attempts to pull his plug. His unlikely awakening isn't accompanied by memory - he has no recollection of anything about his past at all. So he sets out to get himself a life, to piece himself together thanks to the testimonials of people he's told he was close to: a wife, a daughter, a best friend and work partner. The only thing is, the versions of him that they offer are as varied as the people themselves, and vacillate from one moment to another, unexpectedly. One second his doe-eyed daughter calls him "mon petit papa," the next she's accusing him of cold-heartedness and absence. He is left to believe he can only trust himself. "The perception we have of life is often so limited that it can do with some opening up," says Leclerc. "That's what cinema is for. We wanted to take a broad perspective because as precise as memory is, it is also very abstract. We wanted to examine it beyond the character of Alexandre and his own life, and we did in such a way that we talk about... not life after death, but alternate lives, and a space where time doesn't exist, where we sometimes get the impression we've already been there, or we've encountered it in another life. We live in a society where all we talk about is our little everyday reality, but at a certain point I think you need to look at the horizon and think about what we're all doing here." "For me, the interesting thing is to go beyond fear," Dupuis added. "That's what keeps people stuck at the explicative level - where are we going? When are we coming back? When will we get there? That's fear. And to make a movie like Francis made, you have to go beyond." It was getting deep, admittedly, for a first-thing-in-the-morning promo tour interview. But the film invites it. Mémoires affectives is so full of pregnant silences and soul-soothing shots of expansive skies and snowfields that introspection is encouraged, necessary even. Dupuis' signature intense-quiet-type style powerfully makes half the movie, and allows him a depth of acting he hasn't encountered in a while - since he "slipped into the bracket of vedette," he lamented. But it also coincides with a subject of particular interest to him. We spoke at length about science and the limited use we make in this day and age of the human brain's capacities. At some point, I asked whether the unknown of Alexandre's situation, and the aforementioned fear intertwined with it, was based in psychology or spirit in his mind. "For me, spirituality means spirit, the spirit belongs to the mind, and not only the mind, but the body. The body has a memory. Cells, genes, have a memory. It's all one thing. From there comes the idea of archaic memory, the phenomenon that exists when people experience the memory of a prehistoric man who existed two or three thousand years ago, or something. That's where the spirit lies, at the level of nature, nature in the widest sense. We call 'esoteric' things we don't understand." "And that's scary," concluded Leclerc. "When we're afraid of things, we don't want to talk about them, and then the things that are left aside, we try to explain away. But there are erudite doctors in psychiatry who themselves don't understand some phenomena, some real cases. We shouldn't be afraid of talking about them. Or of making a film about it." Mémoires affectives http://www.hour.ca/film/film.aspx?iIDArticle=4554

Mémoires Affectives                                                               The Patched Man Luc Perreault La Presse The second feature movie of Francis Leclerc starts as a thriller. Lying on a hospital bed, an unconscious man turned into a living puzzle. Will we ever know the name of the mysterious driver who abandoned him close to the road while attempting to euthanize an injured deer? Is this the same guy who, taking advantage of the the darkness, came to switch off the life support of the man in a coma? We'll have to wait till the end of the movie for the nightmare experienced by Alexandre Tourneur (RoyDupuis) clarifies a little bit, just enough to leave space for maybe another nightmare. Affective Memories talks indeed about the forgotten past, whether this past has been forgotten as a consequence of a violent trauma, or the one that the person has blocked away because it became too painful, these affective memories, precisely, that weight so heavily on the conscience when they are accompanied by guilt.   The story takes place in Charlevoix in a snowy landscape that tends to erase the traces just like this selective memory that has already allowed Alexandre to wipe out his past. Reduced to a new born state, forgetful of his forgotten, he engages now in a search for each tiny bit of his personal history. Turning into his own investigator, he questions everybody around him. A psychiatrist (Maka Kotto) and a policewoman (Rosa Zacharie), his only support in this quivering world, help him put together the pieces of this disheveled mesh.  The answers to Alexandre's questions come to him in pieces, like breaking points accompanying a particular image processing, like those sepia photos pasted in an old album. Moreover, several of these witnesses contradict each other. Thus, his daughter Sylvaine (Karine Lagueux) says that he was a wonderful man before reproaching him that he was an alcoholic absentee father. Including Patrick (Benot Gouin), his associate in his veterinary clinic, presented as a long time friend, but all of a sudden becoming distant. Stolen memories, the cineaste has already explained.   The film is original in as much as it tries to make a connection between two stages of our cinematography. In the beginning, the thriller approach that surrenders to a more modern fashion, that of this kind of cinema. At the end, a personal quest that makes the link with the tradition of identity cinema. In Alexandre, we find the traces of the orphan cinema for which Jutra (in My Uncle Antoine, for example) was one of the most brilliant illustrators. Having tried to embellish his story, Alexandre ends up accepting the unflattering mirror that he's being presented. The pop of a license plaque marked by a  Je me souviens  - "I remember", suggests that his amnesia could be collective. But Francis Leclerc doesn't seek to limit this quest of a collective conscience, that we can see as the metaphor of his film, in a traditional spirit. His village includes the new Quebec presence (the policewoman and the doctor) as well as the Native American memory (represented by Alexandre's hallucination in innu and by the last song by Florent Vollant). Roy Dupuis plays this patched man with a rare honesty. Thanks to the precision of his acting, his calibrated stuttering, also thanks to the sober but convincing acting of the rest of the cast, especially Rosa Zacharie and Maka Kotto, Affective Memories establishes itself as an author film demanding but well mastered. translation by Dana V http://www.cyberpresse.ca/arts/article/1,144,5537,102004,829517.shtml

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Le Téléjournal de Montréal (October 18) captures by Lindy

Pascale: Good evening, Claude.

Claude: Good evening, Pascale.

 Pascale: Tell us a little bit about Roy Dupuis, the main character of the movie from Quebec "Looking for Alexander".

 Claude: Oh, yes, again, and it's a film by Francis Leclerc, his second feature movie that will be presented during the week-end, Sunday to be precise, at the end of the Montreal Festival of the New Cinema. It will  be shown afterwards at the Excentrices (?) and in about 10 cinemas starting next Friday. In its style, I would say that's it's a fantasy  film, memorable.

 Girl in the scene from the movie: "Do you understand?"
 
 Claude: Imagine for a moment getting out of a coma deprived of all memory. This is what happens to Alexandre Tourneur. Who knocked off this veterinary at the border of the road? There's an investigation, but the victim is not much help. He doesn't even recognize his own daughter.
 
 Scene from the movie:
 Dark haired woman: You don't remember absolutely anything?

Daughter: He doesn't even remember that I'm his daughter. It would be insulting if he remembered the truck make, don't you think?
 
 In the winter cold of Charlevoix, Francis Leclerc's movie starts as a  reconstruct one's identity when we can only count on other's view of us?

 Scene from the movie:
 Guy: I have even thought of euthanizing you."In a province whose logo is "I remember" (je me souviens), the subject  is far from innocent.

 Francis Leclerc: I think that people will discover more things about  themselves than about the movie in general. If this is making them think  of their own identity, for living now in Quebec, then I would have won my bet.

 Roy Dupuis is far from the roles of male leader and combatant that he is  usually offered. He is terrific in the skin of this diminished,  hesitant, and vulnerable man.

Scene from the movie:
 
 Roy: Did I say something wrong?
 The actor, we can feel it, has loved giving life to this project that  took time to deliver because of financial problems.
 Roy: You read the script and when you're done, it's not enough. You know it has to be seen, it has to be heard.

 Claude: Do I understand correctly that it doesn't arrive that often in the life and career of an actor?
 
 Roy: (laughs) You understand.

 The aesthetics of Looking for Alexander is cold and stern but still very artistic, considering it's small budget of $3 million. It's not because  it only come out in about 10 cinemas that we have to see it as a modest  film, says Roy Dupuis.

 Roy: From my point of view it's not more modest. It's the opposite. It's a movie that doesn't follow the recipes. Time is the best ally of this author movie solidly constructed, in the great tradition of the Nordic cinema.

translation by Dana

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Indicatif Presente Roy Dupuis interview

translated by Dana
 

Hello, Roy.

Roy: Hello.

Florence: The gray hair works well for you?

Roy: Yes.

Florence: Anyway. Very beautiful film, deep, compelling you to develop a character that I think is close to yourself. Am I wrong?

Roy: Yes, I think the character is not very far, however, he's just a nature loving who becomes a veterinarian, it's a guy who maybe has alcohol problems, he's a guy who knew how to have fun, before the accident. It was not so far. But I must say, however that he's a character who gets out of a coma...

Florence: Yes, so he's like new...

Roy: Almost new, that's the interesting part, meaning that at the emotional, affective level, yes, he's new, he forgot who he is, he forgot the people who constructed his life.

Florence: He doesn't recognize his wife anymore, he doesn't recognize his daughter...

Roy: No.

Florence: He doesn't recognize his best friend...

Roy: No, but on the technical level of life, he knows what it means to be married, to have a child. He remembers how to drive a car, so on a technical life level, he's an adult, but on the emotional and affective levels, he's a child.

Florence: But this is possible, then, in certain cases of memory loss, I know, Roy Dupuis, that to prepare for your role, you have seen some people who had come out of a coma, who...

Roy: I did meet with a few of them, I talked afterwards to a specialist who takes care of the people who are or have been in a coma. I learned that nobody gets out of a coma the same way. Even the coma, we call it a coma, but nobody experiences it the same way.

Florence: It's like death, the coma...

Roy: It's like death, there are people who don't remember anything, there are others who hear everything, who remember everything. There are people
who get out of a coma and they have forgotten just a fraction of their life, there are others who forgot everything starting from a given year till now, others who didn't forget anything.

Florence: So, your character, when he gets up, we can feel it, and it's one of the interest points of the film, we can feel that there's something there, because beyond trying to remember his wife and mother, or of his daughter, he sometimes has these flashes, very well done cinematographically. He has these kind of flashes that from time to time light up, it seems, also his interest. He asks himself, is it real, is it a dream, or is it my real life that I'm seeing in the flashes?

Roy: There seem to be these flashes that he has, that nobody can really explain, or that nobody talks about among the people close to him.

Florence: However, we think that these people know the story, or maybe not, we can't really tell at the end of the film.

Roy: It's constructed as a puzzle, so in the end I think that all the pieces are there, but people understand the movie, (it's quite funny), quite differently. It's quite interesting.

Florence: Because Francis Leclerc gives us the space for it, as an audience. Everything is not explained, everything is not justified. At some point we are in some sort of fuzzy zone. It didn't bother me, I adore the films that are made this way, but we have to warn them that there will be people who will ask, why did he do that, why did we not know that, why did he not tell us. He doesn't tell us...

Roy: He tells us, the film tells us, but there's something we abandon, that becomes less important. But I think that everything is there. Maybe one has to see it several times.

Florence: One must make an effort. Honestly, I got into the movie from the first images, that are incredibly beautiful, you, everybody knows, the province knows that I love you, I adore you as an actor and as a human being, so I believed it right away, I thought that the female characters were magnificently filmed, real, close, we understand what she goes through, Nathalie Coupa (?), it takes your breath away. Everybody is just right, the one who plays the commissary, what's her name?

Roy: Rosa Zacharie.

Florence: Rosa Zacharie, we feel as if she was right next to us, there is a straightness of the actors, a righteousness in it that makes your character even more moving, because after some time I was with you in the back trying to understand, I wished for you to understand, even if that meant hurting because of what you would understand. Did you have this impression while filming, that this was capital role?

Roy: For me?

Florence: Yes.

Roy: No, I don't think so.

Florence: Were you not troubled while filming it?

Roy: I was invested, even since two years before we started filming. But I don't think... I think of the character, of what I have to do at the moment, I think of serving the film...

Florence: Was this filmed in order or not?

Roy: In disorder.

Florence: In disorder, yes. This is annoying, however.

Roy: It was annoying... it was one of the difficulties in playing this character, because it's a character with a physical evolution, as well as emotional and intellectual...

Florence: Exactly, yes.

Roy: ...so I had to know the material well.

Florence: The director, Francis Leclerc, said about you that you're the most questioning actor from the planet. Are you a tiresome person, asking like that all the time, why, why, why?

Roy: No, I don't think it's exactly that, is it what they wrote? But I think that anyway he likes that, it was a movie that was favorable to that. It was a complex movie, so, yes, I was coming with questions, but I was also coming with answers, sometimes. You should ask him.

Florence: He has already answered that you were asking a lot of questions, you were very intense, very close to him, very present. I'd like to know if you're always like that while filming?

Roy: It depends on the role, on the film. There are some that I understand quite easily. It's also not always a question of understanding but...

Florence: But of feeling...

Roy: ...of making choices. It's arriving with all the possibilities and the right one, it's exploring all the possibilities offered by the character or by the situation, and finally making a choice on the direction we want to take.

Florence: And you are very selective, Roy Dupuis, I think, in the choice of your subjects, sometimes you refuse some categorically, we get the impression that you don't play the actor, as we say in my country.

Roy: (laughs) I try to be selective and still survive, yes, up to a point.

Florence: Do you have the impression that you got a little bit out of the roles of handsome guy that all the girls are crazy about, because we've seen you a lot on the TV, even in terrific shows, like Les Filles de Caleb, Seraphin, etc, but there was also a very strong physical image, but in Looking for Alexander I found you again as an actor because you interpret this character in an even physical way.

Roy: Listen, I never saw those characters from that point of view, if you want, like, this is a handsome guy. I always played my characters simply
trying to make them as deep and lively as possible, and I continue to do it. It's certain that with age, there's a saying in theater that's also true for the cinema, that for a guy the interesting roles start at 40.

Florence: Yes. Because when you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning, do you ask yourself, what will I do of all this?

Roy: (laughs) No, it's still working fine.

Florence: We say that to pretty girls, it must be a handicap, your good looks, however. For a guy it's worse, because we must say the truth, that it's not easy... To come back to this film, Looking for Alexander, what made you accept this role, how did you imagine it beforehand?

Roy: It's simple, it's the script that came to me in the beginning, then I met with Francis and we compared his vision and mine to see if it matched, if it fit. It was a script that seemed important, that belonged to the cinema. It is cinema.

Florence: It's author cinema.

Roy: On top of that.

Florence: Exactly. You did go back to comedy, isn't it?

Roy: Yes.

Florence: With It's Not Me, It's The Other.

Roy: Yes. I made a small comedy.

Florence: Do you think you're good for comedies?

Roy: I have no idea, I found the script pleasant. It seemed fun and Anemone was there, whom I respect enormously, it was the summer, so I said we'll see.

Florence: What kind of role did you have?

Roy: A small thief, loser, who does small thefts, and finally pretends to be a policeman.

Florence: You already played a cop.

Roy: Yes, I already played a cop.

Florence: if my memory serves well. And then you are going to be in an Andre Forcier film. A marking one.

Roy: Yes.

Florence: The United States of Albert. This must be... this would be my dream, with such a different and creative man.

Roy: It was a little bit mine too. We almost met before on different project, and oh well, he always has some difficulties financing his films, because of which it has not worked before, but it was also my dream to work with Marc Andre, and it still is, to continue to work with Marc Andre. I think he's a very important cineaste, he's a world, a universe Marc Andre Forcier. It was a great adventure to film in part in the Mexican desert, and in part in Quebec.

Florence: The more difficult it is, the more he likes it, isn't it? The conditions must...

Roy: I don't know, it wasn't difficult, anyway, my character was crossing the desert playing golf, so it had to be in the desert. Somehow the desert helps the scenery, but it doesn't make it difficult.

Florence: Roy Dupuis, a final word about Looking for Alexander, is there something we forgot to say, a feeling?

Roy: Go see it, go see it, and as soon as possible, because unfortunately the fate of a film in Quebec is decided during the first week, and I
think it's a movie for everyone, it's a movie that scrapes the art.

Florence: And your emotion coming out of the film?

Roy: I'm very satisfied. I am satisfied to have made this movie and I'm happy with the result.

Florence: Thank you very much, Roy Dupuis. I encourage people to go see Looking for Alexander, and it's good, we'll see you in your future projects.

 

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PLOT: While police search for the hit-and-run driver, a man struggles to regain his memory as well as, for better or worse, his sense of self worth after emerging from a coma. A common complaint swirling around the beleaguered Genie Awards, Canada's celebration of homegrown film, is that so few Canadians get to see the films involved. Here is your chance to get in on one of them. No excuses will be allowed. Looking For Alexander (or Memoires Affectives in its original French title) is a worthy Quebec film that figured into the March 21 Genies in a major way. Photographed in harsh, snow-covered landscapes and stark interiors, it plays here in French with English subtitles. The tough-love drama, which is the story of a Quebec man (Roy Dupuis) who emerges from a coma with amnesia, was nominated for six Genies and came away with three. The best actor prize went to the impressive Dupuis and two were earned by writer-director Francis Leclerc, one as best director and the other for best original screenplay, which he shared with writing partner Marcel Beaulieu. The amnesia angle is a common one in movie history, including in Christopher Nolan's acclaimed mystery film Memento, which is constructed backwards and features a lead character who cannot reap new memories. Many other amnesia stories, such as the Jason Bourne sagas, concern a man's attempt to reconstruct his life by interpreting fragments of memories that come to him. That is the approach in Looking For Alexander. Yet Leclerc has mined new gold ore in this familiar vein. As Dupuis interacts with his estranged wife, his angry daughter, his ex-girlfriend, his business partner and other key figures in his past life, he engages them on two levels. One is the straight and obvious: What is said and how. The other, often in total contrast and conflict with the obvious, rumbles up from the subconscious. He harvests memories belonging to the other people and puts himself inside those experiences to unravel his own mystery. For the viewer, as for the lead character, this is extremely confusing at first because we simply do not know what is going on. Dupuis also has out-of-body experiences as an ancient Montagnais Indian hunter and marginally as the white-tailed deer that figures into the hit-and-run plot. Once you get into the rhythm of this conceit, however, Looking For Alexander becomes intriguing, especially because some memories he seeks were buried and lost even before he fell into his coma. Skeletons in his psychological closet begin to rattle with a ferocity that scares him and us. Dupuis' strength is in his ability to balance the character among the various conflicting interpretations put on him by the others. This is a delicate operation. He also interacts well with other new characters in his post-coma phase, including the serene doctor (Maka Kotto) and an enterprising Canadian cop (Rosa Zacharie), both of whom introduce concepts about the value of diverse cultural memories. While much of Looking For Alexander is subtle, challenging and even disturbing, there are riches to be had here in the indirect journey this man takes into his very humanity. (This film is rated PG) More Movie Reviews                                                                         Jam-Canoe

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interview captures:

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updated clips 03-11-05

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