Watching Chili’s Blues is like being whisked back through time, a flashback to 30 years ago. Towards a past that seems light-years away. The Sixties were like a tunnel that you had to pass through in order to emerge into the light. I felt no nostalgia watching this decade; at most a little unease.

December 1963
Roy is almost 8 months, I am 8 years old.

November 1993
Roy has become Pierre-Paul in an invented railway station on Amherst Street, and, three blocks away, I work in Human Resources for the Notre-Dame Hospital.

Every weekday I walk along Sherbrooke Street from the metro station to Plessis Street. Each day during this November, while crossing Amherst Street, I cast a glance to my right following the bend in the road which runs away to the south. The Public Baths are just over there. The old public building is being transformed into a station by the crew of Charles Binamé, who is setting out to show the world this gentle glimpse of the Quebec of 1963. This Quebec which was slowly beginning its quiet revolution. The Quebec before Expo 67.

Every day I estimate the amount of time it takes for a film to get from the shooting stage into the cinemas. Damn! I reckon it will be another 6 infuriating months. The depressing November days succeed in dampening my spirits and I continue on the way to work leaving behind me the thought that there, so near, the dream makers are busy too, slaving away to produce another Quebecois film. They are creating for us, they are creating for me. By the end of the afternoon I am coming back in the opposite direction. Again, in an instant, Roy and all those who gravitate with him around Chili occupy my train of thought.

Chili was my third encounter with Roy on film. I was curious …. curious to see where this adventure would lead me. Films which try to bring alive the atmosphere of previous decades, especially those nearest to us, are generally just a shop window of costume and sets, often powerless to plunge us body and soul into the heart of the recent past. Charles Binamé knew precisely how to recreate this rather dark, melancholy period that was the early Sixties. The memory I have of these half-lit years is, it is true, coloured by a child’s point of view.

I remember an environment which didn’t leave much room for colour and light; everything was woven into the fabric of religion, of order, of television and of men - all in black and white. Like life at that time. In black and white. Men seemed to be big and serious. Women all smelled of perfume, owned furs, and wore aprons. There was one world for men, and one for women.

 I admire the work of Binamé and his efforts to create a connection between these two worlds, and at the same time between the old and new order of things. Between Pierre-Paul and Chili. I admire the work of the director, but I also single out the writer of the screenplay, José Fréchette. And a word of praise too for the musical score, the work of my favourite composer of film music, Richard Grégoire.

The theme

Throughout the film Chili and Pierre-Paul are a metaphor for the male-female relationships of the transitional period that was the Sixties. Men, comfortable in their position of providers, masters of the world, wanted, however, to move on to other things. They wished to see their wildest dreams finally realised (like walking on the moon for example). The development of new technology, the enormous progress achieved since the end of the war, suggested the advent of a society where anything was possible. Women, more grounded in reality, saw in this progress the chance to acquire a surprising freedom. 1963 was the dawn of a new era of feminism. The ensuing years saw the arrival of a new power for western women; the control of their sexuality and thus the ability to make choices. Choices affecting their lives. Thanks to this they redefined the rules of the game and irreversibly upset the order of things.

When Pierre-Paul discovers Chili he catches her in the throws of choosing between life and death. He is simultaneously shaken and fascinated by what he sees. By the power that he sees in Chili’s hands. Throughout the course of the film he lets himself be guided by her. To see where she will go, how far she will go. Which direction she will take. To explore unknown paths under her influence. Because somehow he knows intuitively that she is right, and that her search for Truth is legitimate. He tries however to follow her inside a world where he is unable to do more than skim the surface, as it is a female world and Pierre-Paul is a man. He can view the scenery but he cannot be part of it. He is a foreigner on Chili’s shores.

Paradoxically she needs him so much. She needs his manliness, his male point of view. If female thought is moving and changing, deep as the ocean, man’s strength belongs to the earth. Pierre-Paul is the sun, concrete, the unshakeable rock. What a precious meeting of these two people. That is why this story can only end with a sexual encounter. This is how their communion is realised. Then there’s the inevitable separation. But they will part slowly. Mirroring the manner of their meeting, the break-up gently unwinds, each undoing the ties with regret. Pierre-Paul returns to the throng, rejoins his world, loses himself in the crowd from which he appeared. Chili recovers her broken heart, her revolver, her emptiness, her choices …..