The series : The people of today look at the actions of the people of yesterday.

Whatever the true story of Oliva, Elzire Dionne and their children, Christian Duguay’s series was made, I think, not with the aim of understanding this fabulous and sad affair but more with the aim of demonstrating to what point human ambition and madness can go.

Inspired by John Nihmey’s and Stuart Foxman’s novel « Time of Their Lives - The Dionne Tragedy », Duguay embarked on this adventure with the help of a team of experienced actors. French speaking ones and English speaking ones.

One detail pleased me a lot. This gentle thought of letting actors born in Quebec keep their accent even if the serie was shot in English; and even more, of letting them express themselves several times in their mother language, during a sentence, during an emotion. One proof is the line whispered by Oliva when his home was invaded by reporters : «Là, j’en ai assez, là! » (It’s enough now !) five words loaded with as much exasperation as his eyes, green irises pierced by sun light. Impossible to give to these words the same color in another way than with Quebec French. Characters thus take on a depth and a dimension which distinguish them from the others who speak in English. An explicit demonstration of the division between two communities, between two worlds. Moreover because there is, as background of this series, the unbearable scorn of well-intentioned Anglophones for Francophones, demonstrated by certain sentences scattedred through their : «They are Frenchies you know …»

Duguay’s images are especially revealing about the look he casts on this event and its protagonists. Especially as Christian Duguay is one of the rare directors who is also his own cameraman. His eye and his soul are deeply connected because he sees the action while he’s directing the same action. His demands can be felt. There’s a unity in the picture and not just a complicity like usually between a director and his cameraman. The result is beautiful. The camera moves among the action and people, gives us its look and makes us think. The camera demonstrates one thing very clearly : nothing is only black or white and finally, nobody is exempt from disapproval in this story.

There are two clans. Black zone on one side, those who control or are eager to control : Dr Dafoe, Ontario’s government, the village, the priest, some nurses, the American reporter and the media, American and Canadian companies and at the end, Oliva Dionne, the father.

On the other side, the white zone, that of the pure, the quints. Victims of this collective hysteria, these five little girls were hostage to a lot of predators eager for glory and money.

But in Duguay’s vision, there’s also an adjoining zone. Luckily. That’s what makes this series bright and sensitive. This grey zone is the duality experienced by the main characters, Oliva Dionne first of all.

Roy, in accepting this part, did so probably on the basis of the screenplay reading. In the series, Oliva Dionne is a hearty and gentle man, loving his wife and a loving father to his children. The quintuplets birth totally disrupted his life. First, he’s afraid of losing Elzire because of this laborious childbirth. Then, while he seems to enjoy the ever more likely survival of the children, this adventure begins more and more to resemble a nightmare. Already the father of 5 children, the arrival of 5 others at once, made him very anxious. How will he be able to feed a 12-persons family during a deep economic depression ? His impatience can be rationalized and his distress largely justified by all he will live from that point : the increasing invasion of his life by strangers wanting to control everything, the systematic gap deliberately created by these persons between him, his wife and the five babies, the incompetence and ridiculous «qualities» he is accused of. We can understand that, more than anybody else, he needs his girls’ money. What is less forgivable is the way he, when he has the opportunity, will also exploit his daughters’ childhood and adolescence, he became, it seems, as greedy as those who preceded him as the manager of the quintuplets' assets.

Dr Dafoe. Immersed in Dionne’s life because he’s the local doctor, Dafoe gradually came to enjoy the celebrity and money brought by guardianship of the quintuplets. However, it’s undeniable that the years he dedicated to the five girls created bonds between the girls and him. Beau Bridges gave us clever actor play to make us understand Dafoe’s ambivalence. He appearsed as a tender man, worried about the Dionnes’ well-being but weak in the face of the establishment, dazzled by the luxury and the prestige given by his role with the quintuplets. Disrespectful and, unconcerned by the requests, needs and confusion of his daughters' legal parents, Dafoe doesn’t attract sympahty but we cannot condemn him completely.

Elzire, the quintuplets’ mother, played by Céline Bonnier is a separate case. Céline made her a mother torn by sorrow, anxious about her daughters’ lot but totally unable to rise up against the men who block er way. A woman of heart but defenceless. A voiceless woman because she doesn't speak the language of the majority. She’s unable to understand the real political and economic stakes of this miraculous birth of five little girls in these dark years. The only thing she knows is that her children need her like she needs them. Even if he’s sensitive to her anguishes, her husband is a strict man and she often seems to fear him. She will be silent when he in turn becomes the one who exploits, only letting quietly run, down her face, tears caused by sadness as much as impotence.