McKenna film a well-timed delight
Ryan McKenna finds heart, and humour, on the fringe of the mainstream in Le coeur de Madame Sabali
Language is no barrier to Ryan McKenna. Born and raised an anglophone in a Franco-Manitoban community, it was only natural for the Winnipeg native to make his first Quebec feature en français.
“I (already) spoke French very well, and the actors I wanted to work with were all francophone,” McKenna said, sitting down at Cinéma du Parc one morning last week. “Quebec has such a rich film scene; I just like its history and culture, and I thought it would be more interesting to make a French film.”
After earning a history degree, McKenna found his calling with the Winnipeg Film Group, working on experimental auteur Guy Maddin’s 2007 feature My Winnipeg as well as his own projects.
A followup to McKenna’s 2012 debut, the Winnipeg-shot immigrant tale The First Winter, Le coeur de Madame Sabali appears set to make a splash. The wry, colourful comedy stars Marie Brassard as a woman in a deadend relationship who undergoes a heart transplant and begins to take on traits of the African woman whose organ now beats within her.
“My story partner, Becca Blackwood — who also did the costumes and art direction — had been reading a lot about cellular memory, the idea that organs can contain memories of their donors,” McKenna said. “I found that fascinating. I’m not sure if it’s true, but I thought it would make an interesting dramatic premise for a comedy.”
McKenna found his muse in Brassard, who is not an obvious leading lady for a hip young filmmaker looking to make his mark. The actress shines in this quirky account of an introvert coming into her own. Her character, Jeannette, leaves her dud boyfriend and discovers a whole new world. She is soon seduced by a smooth-talking workplace colleague, Albert (the hilarious Francis La Haye), and welcomed into her heart donor’s Malian community.
For McKenna, the story idea provided multiple opportunities to show characters on the fringe of the mainstream — a place with which he has long felt an affinity.
“I always felt a bit like an outsider,” he said. “It’s part of my own personality, growing up with an English name in a French community in St-Boniface, making films here now in a francophone environment and being half anglophone, and being a shy person. I identify with these kinds of characters, and they tend to be the characters I write about.”
Le coeur de Madame Sabali is visually remarkable, enlivened by Blackwood’s bold costumes and artful sets. The two have worked together since the director came to Montreal in 2008, honing their esthetic on his previous feature and his short films. Blackwood was particularly insistent on giving Brassard’s character a funky wardrobe.
“She felt that Marie Brassard, in a lot of roles she was cast in, was always dressed up like an older lady,” McKenna said. “Becca really wanted to make her look beautiful, like she is in real life. ... She wanted to make her look elegant and stylish — middle-aged women are not always depicted in that way.”
Well known for her theatre and film work with Robert Lepage, dating back to the 1990s, Brassard has been making increasingly illustrious forays into the new wave of Quebec cinema, appearing in recent movies by Denis Côté (Vic et Flo ont vu un ours), Sophie Deraspe (Les signes vitaux) and Mathieu Denis (Corbo). McKenna conceived the part of Jeannette with her in mind.
“I’ve been developing a filmmaking style, a kind of dead approach with low-key acting,” he said. “She’s so good at low-key, physical acting. This film is basically a physical comedy. She can say a lot without saying a lot, and she’s got a very unique look.”
McKenna’s understated sense of humour and minimal dialogue highlight his film’s distinct imagery, which follows in a global filmmaking tradition of offbeat humour that can be traced through a list of names including Jacques Tati, Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismaki, but is less prominent in the realism-revering world of Quebec cinema.
“I wanted to put all these visual jokes in the film,” McKenna said, highlighting Albert’s absurdly kitschy lobster paintings (which he offers Jeannette as gifts) as a prime example. “I wanted to get away from realism. For me, this film is set in Quebec culture and in Malian culture. I didn’t want to make comments about (those communities) and get myself in trouble, so I tried to make it otherworldly.”
That far-out feel was initially confusing to Brassard, who didn’t grasp all the subtleties upon first reading the script. But an early meeting with McKenna left her convinced that she wanted to work with the director.
“I didn’t understand what was going on (in the story), but I liked it,” said the actress, her eyes twinkling with enthusiasm. “It was surreal, and I loved his unconventional way of writing. After meeting, I had a better understanding of his intentions. I’m always attracted to singular voices, people who are a bit out of the ordinary. Ryan really is an artist; his intelligence seduced me.”
Le coeur de Madame Sabali is Brassard’s first leading film role, and she admits to finding parallels between her character’s journey of self-discovery and her own experience on this project.
“It’s an ode to life and to abandon,” she said of the film. “It’s a nice metaphor — this woman discovers one day that she doesn’t like her life; her heart hurts, in every way possible. She’s suffering emotionally and physically, but she has the good fortune of being given the heart of this African woman, meeting her family and being accepted as one of them.
“It’s not realistic, but it’s very beautiful. All of a sudden, this character is given a second chance at life and she learns to let go, without understanding why. It’s a bit like me, reading the script; inexplicable things happen to her, and instead of judging them and stopping, she decides to go with it.”