Bon Cop, bad times
Too many Canadian filmgoers overlook their own back yard
Jason Anderson
The Canadian film industry is a slough of despond that is soaked to saturation levels with angst, misery, bitterness and resentment. Nevertheless, directors usually do their best to put on a brave face when talking up their latest endeavour-it's easier for everyone if we all stay upbeat.
That's why I was surprised at an internationally renowned Québécois filmmaker's frankness when he speculated about his movie's likely future in Canada once it was done with the festival circuit. We were talking just after his film — a very strong third feature — had played to several enthusiastic rooms at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it had been given a slot in a prestigious program.
But the scenario he presented for his movie's English Canadian release — a sparsely attended week-long run on a single screen in Toronto — was a dismal but all-too-accurate vision of what happens to Québécois films when they venture outside the province. Whether a Québécois movie is meant to be a populist crowdpleaser or an audacious piece of arthouse fare, it seems equally likely to be ignored by the rest of the country. And this sad fate applies only to the precious few Canadian films that get a truly national release.
The ongoing struggle by Canadian filmmakers to interest audiences in their wares has been exhaustively documented. And every once in a while, their tactics produce a feel-good story. On the English-speaking side of the business, Paul Gross' Passchendaele has been celebrated as a success, this despite mixed reviews and the fact it took a $20 million budget from public and private sources plus $2 million for prints and advertising to sell about $5 million worth of tickets. Healthy grosses for Sarah Polley's Away from Her and Deepa Mehta's Water on both sides of the border have also brightened the general mood.
Yet English Canadians are most likely never to embrace their countrymen's wares with the same consistency and ardency as French Canadians do theirs. Whereas the number of Anglo films that have earned as much as Passchendaele can be counted on one hand, Quebec has produced a bounty of high-grossing hits in the last decade, movies such as Les 3 P'tits Cochons ($4.5 million), C.R.A.Z.Y. ($6.2 million) and Seraphin ($9.6 million). Last year, the action film Nitro out-grossed Ratatouille and Live Free or Die Hard in Quebec.
Of those four, only C.R.A.Z.Y. had much impact in the rest of Canada-two of the others had no English Canadian theatrical release at all. Indeed, visibility for Québécois cinema on a national level is shockingly pitiful even when the highly varied fortunes for Canadian cinema in general are taken into account. Though well-attended film festivals in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Halifax give exposure to the latest works of the province's auteurs — films such as Lost Song, the third drama by New Brunswick-born, Montreal-based director Rodrigue Jean and the surprise winner of TIFF's prize for best Canadian feature over new efforts by Atom Egoyan and Deepa Mehta — these screenings are often the only occasions these movies will get in front of Anglo audiences. The annual slate of Genie nominations perennially includes movies virtually unknown even to hardened industry watchers — this year, that dubious honour went to the best-feature nominee Continental, un film sans fusil.
As for more commercially minded products such as Nitro and the recent smash Cruising Bar 2, the same elements that foster their massive success in Quebec-e.g., an emphasis on local humour, a carefully cultivated star system that exists independently of Hollywood-shut out other Canadians. That Québécois hits also struggle to find audiences in Europe (though C.R.A.Z.Y. and the 2004 comedy La Grande Seduction were minor hits in France) seems to confirm the pervasive notion that the province's hits are doomed to only go down with the hometown crowds. So does the fact that Bon Cop, Bad Cop — a film that was cravenly calculated to appeal to punters in both of our two solitudes — did the majority of its business in Quebec. The traditionally tiny market share for non-English-language and non-Hollywood fare in the rest of Canada is another major impediment.
Yet it's not as if Anglo audiences are necessarily averse to French-language fare-the Euro imports La Vie en Rose and Tell No One became sleeper hits thanks to strong word of mouth. It's not hard to believe that Québécois movies like Lost Song or Lea Pool's Maman est chez le coiffeur could fare just as well if their distributors are sufficiently savvy. (Both are slated to get English-Canadian theatrical releases next year.)
The problem is that few in the industry are willing to take that risk, given the disappointing results for such seemingly sure bets as the latest by one of Canada's most celebrated filmmakers (Denys Arcand's sour satire Days of Darkness) or a biopic about a hockey hero (The Rocket, a.k.a. Maurice Richard, a solidly crafted vehicle for Quebec's biggest movie star, Roy Dupuis).
So while the province continues to boast Canada's most robust film scene, that director's pessimism is sadly understandable. Even Canadian cinema's few genuine hits are doomed to be ignored by the bulk of the moviegoing public, a bon cop being no competition for a caped crusader or a talking chihuahua. T
