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>> L’Esprit des lieux is a melancholy
but poignant love letter to regional Quebec

COUNTRY STYLE: L’Esprit des lieux

by Malcolm Fraser

It’s been a productive year for local director Catherine Martin. Even before the merciful arrival of the spring thaw, she’s already released her second fiction feature, Dans les villes, and now her first feature documentary, L’Esprit des lieux, which takes us into the heart of deepest Quebec and its history.

In 1970, Hungarian-born Montreal photographer Gabor Szilasi took a trip into Quebec’s Charlevoix region to take pictures of its inhabitants and their environments. The series was intended as a portrait of a traditional culture that was dying out. In L’Esprit des lieux, Martin traces Szilasi’s steps and tracks down the people in the photos (or more often, their children and grandchildren) to explore what has changed in these small rural communities and what has stayed the same.

Having just seen Dans les villes, it becomes quickly obvious that Martin has a unique authorial style: her work has a very similar aesthetic in both documentary and fiction. The compositions are austere, with the camera rarely moving, and the pace is unapologetically slow. Interviewing her subjects, she uses a minimum of cuts, preferring to leave in the digressions, stumbles and awkward silences that characterize everyday speech. Though this is an adjustment for your average MTV-addled viewer, it’s refreshingly natural, and works perfectly in depicting the unhurried pace of rural life.

It’s also an increasingly rare treat these days to see a documentary shot on film. While the digital revolution has certainly enabled a lot of work that otherwise might not have been seen, it’s also resulted in an aesthetic dumbing-down; Martin’s obvious affection for the old ways of life seems appropriately matched to the old-school approach of shooting on film.

The film is melancholy in its depiction of a fading culture, but full of beautiful images, both of departed symbols (a once-mighty St-Laurent riverboat reduced to a rotting skeleton) and those that remain (a baker making bread with archaic technology, a woman’s collection of religious artifacts). And for those with an anthropological interest in Quebec French, the range of thick regional accents is both fascinating and challenging. The film comes through as a heartfelt love letter to the regions, poignant and full of bittersweet emotion.

L’Esprit des lieux opens Friday, March 16

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