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Canada/France 1989
Directed by
Denys Arcand
120 minutes
Rated MA

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
2.5 stars

Jesus Of Montreal

Denys Arcand’s film was sizeable art-house hit in its day winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival but it has not aged well. Partly this is due to its 1980s production values, the tackiness of which is exacerbated by an evidently limited budget. Partly it is due to an excess of earnestness-cum-self-righteousness (amongst which, anomalously Arcand interpellates a very funny scene involving the dubbing of a porn movie) .

An intense young actor, Daniel (Lothaire Bluteau), is hired to modernize the local church’s long-running Easter passion play. He recruits four other fringe theatre actors to join him and they stage a boldly (well at least according to the narrative) renovated account of Jesus’s death and resurrection. The Church however is displeased and cancels the play leading to Daniel’s nervous breakdown as he over-identifies with the Messiah.

Had Arcand stuck to this potentially fecund material his film would have been a good deal better but he lards it with swipes at the shallowness of the media/PR and advertising worlds that are not only ridiculously heavy-handed but are not well-executed (with a fake beer commercial that is unbelievably awful) and that make the film seem to go on forever.  At times it is hard to tell if his cast are playing actors who take themselves too seriously or if they are simply infected by Arcand’s mis-placed sense of significance. By the time Daniel is being touted as some kind of savior of modern theatre you’re hardly likely to care.

FYI: The repertory-style films of Robert Guédiguian (which were yet to come) have a good deal of family resemblance to this but are much more skillfully handled.

 

 

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