Completed - FRENCH, POLISH - Drama - 91 minutes
An obsessed scholar attempts to withdraw from the world but finds personal ties drawing him back into the family he had left behind, in this novelistic, beautifully modulated drama from acclaimed Québécois filmmaker Bernard Émond.
Year of production : 2012 Director(s) : Bernard ÉMOND Writer(s) : Bernard ÉMOND Cast : Gilles RENAUD, Isabelle VINCENT, Patrick DROLET, Willia FERLAND-TANGUAY, Geneviève ST LOUIS, Jack ROBITAILLE, Sara SIMARD Producer(s) : Bernadette Payeur PAYEUR (ACPAV), Marc DAIGLE (ACPAV)
Pierre Leduc is aimless, forlorn – an empty shell of a man. A literary scholar in his late thirties, he has lost all faith in the world and in the students at the Quebec university where he teaches. He finds some solace in translating the works of Edward Stachura, a Polish poet who took his own life in 1979 at age 42. Pierre resigns from the university and sinks deeper and deeper into despair, until one day his estranged father reaches out to him and announces he is dying of cancer. He informs Pierre that he plans to leave him a vast fortune, amassed during a lifetime of underhanded real estate dealings. Pierre turns him down, insisting he has no interest in his ill-gotten gains. His father dies before he can change Pierre’s mind. Not long afterward, a young girl knocks on Pierre’s door: Adèle, the daughter he walked out on years ago, before she was even born. At first, Pierre denies that he is her father, but Adèle is persistent and gets the better of him. Little by little, their budding relationship rekindles Pierre’s will to live. But the past eventually comes back to haunt him… The film is a fable about legacy – both good and bad, as well as a meditation on isolation in the modern world and the fundamental need for human connection.
Country(ies) : CANADA
Toronto - TIFF 2012 Masters