POOL, VANASSE TOGETHER AGAIN FOR LATEST FILM
Director, actor back in familiar territory with promising Nélisse added to mix
Léa Pool is probably Quebec’s most prolific unknown filmmaker. She has directed more than a dozen feature films and a handful of documentaries since making her first feature, Strass Café, in 1980.
At a time when everyone is the western world seems to be discussing the woeful lack of female directors, Pool is clearly an, if not, the exception.
None of her films have been hits, let alone box-office sensations. Still, she continues to create “quieter” films often based on social and ethical themes, subjects that are not in any way knee-slappers. Like the auteur she is, she follows her own road.
Many point to her 1999 film Emporte-moi (Set Me Free) as her best film. Given that 18 years have passed since then, that could be discouraging if not for the fact that Pool has experienced a resurgence with her last couple of films.
La dernière fugue in 2010 was one of the first films to take on the issues surrounding aging parents and Alzheimer’s disease. La passion d’Augustine, released in 2015, is the story of Mother Augustine, who is determined to provide young women with a musical education in the aftermath of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution.
Pool’s films often work because she attracts and/or finds great actors, all of whom are interested in working with her because of her subjects and the pleasure of working with an actor’s director.
La passion d’Augustine’s Mother Superior is a perfect example. Acting against type, Céline Bonnier is astonishingly convincing as the determined nun, while Lysandre Ménard as the talented piano student is another Pool discovery.
One of the reasons Emportemoi was so well received was because of another discovery; Karine Vanasse, who at 15 and in her first feature film role, was cast alongside Pascale Bussières, one of Quebec’s finest actresses, and veteran Serbian actor Miki Manojlovic (When Papa Was Away on Business).
To steal a movie from actors of this calibre, which is exactly what Vanasse did, is not petty larceny, it’s grand theft larceny.
And she has not looked back. In either official language.
In 2011, American TV caught up to Vanasse and she was cast in the big-budget Pan Am series, in which she played a French airline stewardess. There was no crash, just a cancellation.
Following that, she landed on her feet in the U.S. cult series Revenge, all the while working on film and TV projects here in Quebec.
Last winter, she was detective Lise Delorme in the six-hour CTV network drama series Cardinal. She plays a brainy detective trying not to stand out in the brawny male cop world. Her slightly accented, but totally fluent, English adds a nice patine to the role and Vanasse makes Delorme the perfect TV character; whenever she leaves the screen we want her to come back.
Season 2 of Cardinal is shot and awaits CTV’s announcement on when it will air, while Vanasse and her colleagues are getting ready to go back to North Bay to shoot Season 3.
She shows off her comedic chops in this summer’s hilarious sequel De père en flic 2. Sandwiched between Louis José Houde and Michel Côté — two of the funniest people in the world — you don’t get to steal much glory, but good for you if you can hold your own. And that’s exactly what Vanasse does.
What a perfect idea, then to reteam Pool and Vanasse, back in familiar territory: confused adolescent, mother living through a separation, biology and certain rites of passage. This time, though, there is a difference. This time Vanasse is the mother.
The film is Et au pire, on se mariera (If Worse Comes to Worst, We’ll Get Married) which is described as a story about love, “love that can devour and destroy.”
Ironically, Vanasse’s onscreen daughter is played by someone even more prodigious, Sophie Nélisse, who at 17 already has a couple of best supporting actress awards for her film debut in Monsieur Lazhar, to say nothing of big roles in U.S. and British productions, including The Book Thief.
Pascale Bussières to Karine Vanasse to Sophie Nélisse, almost 20 years of continuity, Léa Pool continuity — not a commodity the film business always appreciates.
In Quebec, however, where culture continues to matter, it will be interesting to see how today’s audiences respond to the next generation of Léa Pool women.
Et au pire, on se mariera is in theatres now.