Les Filles de Caleb

(Emilie)

Emilie is one of the best acted, filmed, scored, etc., etc. television series I've ever seen!  There aren't enough superlatives to describe it.   The first time I watched, over a 10-day  winter school break, I found myself thinking & dreaming about nothing else but Roy's character Ovila & his relationship with Emilie. (OK, not *completely* true - some of those day/night dreams were of just Ovila in various stages of dress & undress <g>.) Their romance is compelling & a roller coaster of emotion - at times full of joy, then full of pain.  In either case, Roy Dupuis & Marina Orsini play the protagonists with amazing intensity & emotion.  You will laugh, cry, hope and despair right along with them.

The supporting cast is also terrific and though I fast forwarded through the non-Ovila/Emilie parts during my *second* watching, the story was totally engrossing the first time through.

Not to be missed!

Skippy

Ovila: "Goodbye, my beautiful mist."

[Note: This review includes spoilers, although I tried to keep them to a
minimum.]

"Les Filles de Caleb" is a love story set in rural Quebec in the early
1900s. A twenty-hour miniseries that originally aired in 1990, it stars
Marina Orsini as Emilie Bordeleau and Roy Dupuis as Ovila Pronovost. They
both do a wonderful job of portraying the highs and lows of these characters
over a period of twenty years.

Emilie is a dedicated, talented schoolteacher, passionate about her
vocation, who teaches in a one-room schoolhouse. Courted by a local boy,
eighteen-year-old Emilie is instead strongly attracted to his younger
brother Ovila, who is two years younger than herself as well as one of her
students. Marina Orsini gives a powerful and compelling performance. She may
be my favorite of Roy's leading ladies.

Ovila Pronovost is different from every character Roy has ever played; I
felt sorry for him and wanted to slap him at the same time. (The closest
thing to Ovila is probably Alexis in "Seraphin" -- in fact, I bet they
wanted him for Alexis because of Ovila.) A quiet, introverted loner, Ovila
always intends to do the right thing but finds it difficult to deal with the
harder aspects of life: grief, loss, fatherhood, responsibility. At one
point, his mother observes that Ovila is like his grandfather, who was
always off to the woods and showed up once in awhile to get his wife
pregnant, only to leave again.

The best part of the earlier episodes (for me, anyway) is the romance. There
is an early scene where Ovila and Emilie are watching two horses mate. They
are both strongly aroused and hyper aware of each other, but cannot touch
because they are not alone. He stares at her and gently touches her neck,
and she reacts subtly to his touch. Very, very sexy, with no sex at all.
There is also an erotic scene where Emilie is sleeping and touching herself
as she fantasizes about Ovila swimming naked in a waterfall. (Yes, Roy does
two nude scenes, including, briefly, the full Monty.) The wedding night
scenes are just lovely, passionate and realistic. And I loved the way he
turns the brim of his hat around when he kisses her.

On their wedding day, Emilie discovers that Ovila's first name isn't Ovila
-- it's Charles. In truth, this is symbolic of the fact that even though
they spend five years longing for each other before they are wed, Emilie
doesn't really know Ovila when she marries him. On their wedding night, they
go swimming in the lake, in the dark; they are setting off into a dark
unknown, an uncertain future, and cannot see what is ahead of them. As they
weather terrible hardships and have one child after another, Emilie loses
the enthusiasm and optimism of youth while Ovila struggles unsuccessfully to
be the man she expects and needs him to be.

One thing I liked most about this miniseries was its feminist theme. The
story opens with an incident from Emilie's childhood, featuring her focused
rebellion against her father's unfair division of work between boys and
girls. (This same segment includes the brutal death of Caleb's favorite
horse, illustrating that the hardship is not just for women; in truth,
Ovila's options are never much better than Emilie's.) After she marries,
Emilie is trapped by biology, at the mercy of the man she chooses when she
is young and carefree. It is interesting that Emilie's best friend Berthe
shuns men and marriage and becomes a cloistered nun. As Emilie's life
becomes more and more difficult, Berthe's choice, as restricted as it is,
often appears to be the better one.

Many of the characters are memorable. Emilie's father Caleb, in particular,
is just adorable. And there are many wonderful scenes, like the Christmas
pageant that Emilie painstakingly organizes and presents in order to make
the parents like her; the visits of the unconventional school inspector; the
comic aspects of the entire school board brawling in the schoolyard. I was
particularly moved by the entire Pronovost family kneeling in front of
kitchen chairs, praying while a loved one is dying. There is a gruesome
forceps birth, the urinary difficulties of a child who is dying from kidney
disease, a shocking scene where Emilie gives birth alone in a blinding
snowstorm.

This story is joyous, tragic, and melancholy. Life is so hard and cold;
there is disease and death, poverty and want. Yet, the characters often
express so much joy in living. There's the pleasure they take in their
children, the earthiness and joy of sex, the beauty of the landscape, the
closeness to the earth.

This is an exceptional miniseries. It is absorbing and moving, beautifully
done.

Four out of four stars,

Billie
http://www.billiedoux.com/