«La maison où j’ai grandi» The changing landscape of nostalgia in Quebec’s contemporary coming-of-age films Julia Morgan Charles Department of Art History and Communication Studies McGill University, Montreal June 2009 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts © Julia Morgan Charles, 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract.....................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements..................................................................................................iv Introduction...............................................................................................................1 Plot Synopses: Maman est chez le coiffeur......................................................12 C’est pas moi, je le jure!..........................................................25 CHAPTER 1: Getting the diagnosis: The nostalgia film as symptom...................37 CHAPTER 2: The thaw: Nostalgia‘s shifting horizon...........................................59 CHAPTER 3: Carrying the past: The filial dimensions of Quebec‘s nostalgia.....91 Conclusion............................................................................................................111 References............................................................................................................113 i ABSTRACT This study examines the role of nostalgia in contemporary Quebec cinema through the analysis of two recent coming-of-age films set in the 1960s: Maman est chez le coiffeur (Léa Pool, 2008) and C’est pas moi, je le jure! (Philippe Falardeau, 2008). While the ―nostalgia film‖ has been roundly criticized for promoting a superficial engagement with history, and a dangerous withdrawal from the present, I argue that in the context of Quebec, it should be understood as performing important critical work. Given the long and influential ties between the coming-of-age film, the family romance, and filmic nostalgia in Quebec to the national imaginary, I argue that these films reflect broader shifts in the state of cultural memory. Far from foreclosing a consideration of the future, films that creatively re-imagine the past enable new and empowering engagements with it. With these issues in mind, I go on to argue for a more measured consideration of the potential of nostalgia itself. Cette étude examine le rôle de la nostalgie dans le cinéma québécois contemporain à travers l'analyse de deux films de 2008 sur le passage à l'âge adulte, dont l'action se déroule dans les années soixante : Maman est chez le coiffeur (Léa Pool, 2008) et C’est pas moi, je le jure ! (Philippe Falardeau, 2008). Alors que les films nostalgiques et la nostalgie elle-même sont vivement critiqués pour prétendument favoriser un rapport superficiel à l'Histoire et un dangereux détachement vis-à-vis du présent, cette Thèse soutient que dans le contexte du Québec, les films traitant du passage à l'âge adulte et de la nostalgie entretiennent de longue date des liens influents avec l'imaginaire collectif et qu'ils doivent être considérés comme porteurs d'un important travail critique. En outre, ii ces films reflètent les changements profonds advenus dans la mémoire culturelle du Québec et, loin d'empêcher une prise en compte de son avenir, donnent plus de raisons encore de s'engager au regard de celui-ci. Sur la base de ces observations, cette Thèse développe une argumentation en faveur d‘une plus juste appréciation du potentiel de la nostalgie elle-même. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my thesis supervisor, Dr. Carrie Rentschler, for her extremely useful feedback and unwavering support throughout this process. I consider myself very lucky to have worked with someone as generous of time, energy, and ideas as she has consistently been. Likewise, I would like to express my appreciation to the women of Dr. Rentschler‘s working group for their early commentary on the original mess of ideas that eventually became this thesis, as well as for the privilege of being part of such a dynamic and inspiring group. Thanks go as well to Dr. Will Straw for his early suggestions and effortless acquaintance with all things nostalgia and Quebec, as well as the encouragement that he offered on an earlier paper that subsequently convinced me of the viability of my topic. This process would not have been possible without the patience and unconditional love of my family and friends, who have put up with me during what was occasionally a trying process. To that end, I would like first of all to thank my partner in all things, David Lewkowich, who kept me sane, fed, and relatively balanced, and whose boundless curiousity and willingness to experiment have been an endless source of inspiration for my own intellectual pursuits. Thank you as well to my extremely wonderful parents for their unflagging enthusiasm and support in my various pursuits throughout the years. I want to thank my amazing friends for enduring my occasional bouts of reclusion and melancholy, and for their formidable knowledge of the restorative effects of wine and nights off; also, a big thanks to Timothée Memmi for his savvy translation help. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge my poor neglected dogs, Baba and Benito, for selflessly forcing me out of the house and into the sunshine when inspiration waned. iv INTRODUCTION Over the past year, Quebec cinema has been garnering media attention for what some are describing as its increasingly retrospective gaze; of the province‘s1 four films listed in Canada’s Top Ten for 2008, all were set in the past, from the 1950s onwards.2 This is especially telling when one considers that the list for 2007 contained only two French language films from Quebec, both set in an extremely bleak present.3 Some have suggested that the recent nostalgic turn in Quebec cinema is endemic of a regressive and myopic tendency in the face of recent issues around reasonable accommodation and the waning of a strong nationalist agenda. In effect, they argue that these ―nostalgia films‖4 function as an escapist denial of the present in favour of evoking ―a white Quebec before the immigrants got here.‖5 This explanation is given some credence by the inflammatory nature of much of the coverage surrounding the infamous Bouchard-Taylor Commission from 2007, as well as the persistent specter of xenophobia that has long haunted the 1 Throughout this study, I refer to Quebec alternately as both ―province‖ and ―nation.‖ This is a deliberate attempt to articulate the interstice that Quebec occupies between the two radically different subjectivities, the negotiation of which has been a defining characteristic and tension of its political project. In referring to Quebec as province, I am indicating its (current) status in the dominion of Canada; by nation, I am referring to Benedict Anderson‘s definition of a nation as ―an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign‖ (Anderson, 2006, p. 6). 2 Established in 2001 by the Toronto International Film Festival Group, ―Canada‘s Top Ten is a unique annual event . to honour excellence in contemporary Canadian cinema‖ ("Canada's Top Ten," 2008). The four Quebec feature films in question from 2008‘s list are Ce qu’il faut pour vivre (set in the 1950s), La Mémoire des anges (a collage of NFB footage chronicling Montreal‘s evolution over the 20th century), C’est pas moi, je le jure!, and Maman est chez le coiffeur (both set in the 1960s). 3 These were Denys Arcand‘s L’Âge des ténèbres and Stéphane Lafleur‘s Continental, un film sans fusil, the former an incredibly cynical and almost dystopic take on present-day Quebec, and the latter a dark portrayal about contemporary isolation and loneliness told through the intersection of four lives after a middle-aged man suddenly goes missing. 4 By enclosing the term ―nostalgia film‖ in quotations here, I am referring specifically to Fredric Jameson‘s definition of the genre; a definition whose implications and subsequent criticism I will be looking at in greater detail in Chapter 1. 5 This quote is taken from an interview with the Acadian filmmaker Rodrigue Jean (who sets all his films ―in the present‖) on the national CBC radio program, C’est la vie, wherein he dismissed the recent glut of films set in the province‘s past within the common teleology of Quebec‘s hostility to difference and rapid change, in the current ―nostalgia mood [of returning to a period in Quebec history, specifically] . the seventies and the sixties where it was a white Quebec before the immigrants got here and where it was almost a tribal thing, people were just amongst themselves‖ ("Interview with Rodrigue Jean," 2009). 1 sovereigntist agenda.6 Ultimately though, this explanation is too facile to prove satisfactory. While I believe there is some truth to these suggestions, at least insofar as they help to potentially explain the political economy behind the films‘ simultaneous production, as well as their perennial popularity, it is my contention that many of the films themselves, as cultural texts, can more constructively (and less literally) be understood as performing the important memorial work of coming to terms with the legacies of these histories, as an important step in transcending them. As such, some of these nostalgia films might be more usefully categorized within the cinema of what Jocelyn Létourneau (2005), among others, have speculated is the current ―postnational‖