Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Babine - more Québec cinema!



When the church of a very small village is destroyed in a fire, the local village «idiot», Babine, the son of the village witch is accused of the crime and the death of the old Curé by his replacement... a religious fanatic who will stop at nothing to assure those he does not like are punished. Babine escapes and find a traveling circus where he befriends, amoung others, a giant Bull, which comes in handy later on.


The real cause of the fire was the release of some «fireflies» (who actually produce fire and the person responsible tries to clear babine and bring the village to it’s senses about the new Curé, who is really the villain of the piece.


I am not sure if anyone not living here in Québec will ever get to see this film... it is despite the typical low budget of our productions, beautiful and profound at points. It moves slowly and lyrically, and the characters are all portrayed very well by the actors. The villag eitself is an obvious set-piece, which actually works to the film advantage. After all this is a fairy-tale story not a real life documentary.


I’ve been wanting to buy this film pn Blu-ray before it’s all sold out forever.. somehow I doubt there will be a second pressing as it’s alittle limited in it’s audience. Sadly, I don’t have the cash thse days, but I’d say to anyone that can... buy it. Little sweet films like this deserve all the help they can get.


Not everyone I know loved this film like I did, but I would rather see 100 films like this come out for each "Terminator 4" or Transformers 2" and the studios would still be saving money the overall costs!






2 comments:

Pantheon Zeus said...

sounds lovely

Behemoth media said...

Unfortunately the days of people reading sub-titles seems over. When we were all young we RAN to a movie with subtitles, now they run from them, so unless you speak Québécois... I am afraid this film will remain unknown everywhere but here! :(