Mars et Avril leaps off the pages of graphic novels onto big screen
Mars et Avril, a Quebec-made science fiction film that will première at the Festival du nouveau cinéma Thursday, is a fascinating movie. But the backstory is nearly as fascinating as what you see on screen.
Martin Villeneuve, the younger brother of award-winning filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, trained as a graphic designer, nabbed his first real job after university working as an art director at the happening local advertising agency Sid Lee and, in his spare time, wrote two novels.
Mars et Avril, Volumes 1 and 2 are graphic novels, though the term in French, “photo-roman,” is a better description. The two books have text accompanied by photos of the action in the story, featuring many of the actors who are now starring in the movie adaptation, notably Jacques Languirand, Paul Ahmarani and Robert Lepage. The first book was published 10 years ago, and Villeneuve began working on the screenplay in 2005.
“It’s amazing how these people remained attached to the project, which tells a lot about the essence of the project,” Villeneuve, who also directed the movie, said in an interview this week. “Beyond the visual effects, it’s a story of friendship. Jacques, Paul, Caroline (Dhavernas) and Robert, they’re all good friends, and it was amazing to do a project with friends with that amount of talent. That’s how this movie got finished: because none of these people ever abandoned it.”
Set in the Montreal of the future, Mars et Avril is the tall tale of an aging musician, Jacob (Languirand), who plays instruments that are built based on illustrations of women’s bodies. The instruments are designed by his much younger pal Arthur (Ahmarani). Both men are smitten with Avril, an alluring photographer. In the photos in the book, she’s portrayed by Marie-Josée Croze, but Croze was not available for the shoot three years ago, which is when Villeneuve turned to Dhavernas. The other key character is Eugène Spaak, an inventor and cosmologist played by playwright and filmmaker Lepage.
Lepage was set to produce Mars et Avril, but dropped out when he walked away from the behind-the-scenes side of the film biz, frustrated with how the funding agencies work here. He appears as a hologram in the film, and Villeneuve talks of filming only Lepage’s head months before the shoot in order to use these images for the hologram.
Shooting was supposed to take place in the fall of 2008, but was delayed six months, which is when Villeneuve lost both Lepage and Croze because of scheduling conflicts.
“I said as a joke: ‘We should do a hologram out of Robert because he’s everywhere and nowhere in the planet at the same time. He has that in his very nature, and his character, Eugène Spaak, is in between life and death, and he’s in between reality and virtuality. So why not make him a hologram?’ Everyone laughed and the joke became a solution.”
The Lepage hologram is just one of many visual flourishes in this eye-catching film, with Villeneuve, noted Belgian production designer (and comic-book artist) François Schuiten and cinematographer Benoit Beaulieu creating a stunningly poetic image of futuristic Montreal.
Done mostly in the studio over 22 days, with visual effects in nearly every shot, Villeneuve says the shoot “was hell.” Sixty people worked full time on the film in post-production for six to nine months, and they somehow managed to do all this for only $2.3 million. Villeneuve says when American film types see Mars et Avril and learn what the budget was, they often ask if he didn’t simply make a mistake with the decimal point — whether it was actually $23 million rather than $2.3 million.
Benoît Charest, the Oscarnominated composer who provided the inventive score, jokes that George Lucas called Villeneuve recently to ask him to direct the next Star Wars movie — for $2.3 million.
For Villeneuve, it was all about being innovative.
“If you don’t have money, take time,” he said. “It’s two notions — time and love. I got lots of generosity from everyone involved. There’s no relation between the budget and what’s on screen.”
The extraordinary musical instruments seen in the film are the perfect example of Villeneuve’s budget-conscious ingenuity. He couldn’t afford to have them built, so he went to Cirque du Soleil CEO Guy Laliberté and convinced him to buy the instruments before they were even made. Need a train from the future? No problem: They shot on a train built in 1885 that they found at the Exporail train museum in Saint-Constant, and added some nifty visual sleights-of-hand to make it fit with what Villeneuve likes to call the film’s retro-futurist look.
“Every department had nothing, so they had to use their creativity.”
Mars et Avril screens at the Imperial Cinema, 1430 Bleury St., Thursday at 6:30 p.m. as part of the Festival du nouveau cinéma. It opens in general release on Friday.