Maria Chapedelaine brings a Quebec-literature classic to handsome life onscreen, October 20 and 21
Alliance Française and Visions Ouest present the new film at Vancouver and Coquitlam theatres
Alliance Française and Visions Ouest present Maria Chapdelaine on October 20 at 7 pm at Cineplex Marine Gateway, and on October 21 at 7 pm at Cineplex Silvercity Coquitlam (In a copresentation with la Société francophone de Maillardville.
MARIA CHAPDELAINE, a novel by Louis Hemon, has been taught to generations of Quebec schoolchildren. And that’s fitting because it so vividly captures the province’s rural life for young people at the turn of the last century. Think horse-drawn sleighs, thick deciduous forest, and candle-lit nights in a cabin.
Now director Sebastien Pilote has turned the beloved classic into a handsomely shot new period piece, and the folks at the Alliance Française and Visions Ouest (the latter who bring you the Rendez-Vous Festival of French film each year) are showing it in two special screenings here.
Set in 1910, the story begins with the titular 17-year-old (played by newcomer Sara Montpetit), who lives with her hard-working but loving family on a remote homestead by the Péribonka River north of Lac Saint-Jean, where they work tirelessly to push back the limits of the woods that surround their property. Maria awaits the return of fur-trapper François Paradis, who has promised to marry her. But when he doesn’t show up, she has to consider two suitors: Lorenzo Surprenant, who works in the factories of Massachusetts, and Eutrope Gagnon, who’s set to clear the land he has taken near the Chapdelaines’.
You can catch the epic work in a screening October 20 at 7 pm the Cineplex Marine Gateway, and on October 21 at 7 pm at Cineplex Silvercity Coquitlam (In a copresentation with la Société francophone de Maillardville).
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