House of all sorts

>> Le Minot d’or takes an up-close-and-personal look at the mentally deficient

by MATTHEW HAYS

Making documentaries about the mentally ill and mentally deficient has long created ethical dilemmas for filmmakers. When is the filmmaking process simply downright exploitative? How can one possibly secure consent from subjects who, by the filmmakers’ own admittance, aren’t really of sound mind?

Perhaps most notably, cinema verité grandaddy Frederick Wiseman payed for his unblinking look at a mental institution, Titicut Follies, when the film was banned for decades. Quebec filmmaker Isabelle Raynauld won the Jutra Award for best documentary this year for her much gentler, far less harsh portrait of a household of mentally deficient elderly men, Le Minot d’or (Blue Potatoes). Those looking for scandalous treatment of the mentally deficient had best look elsewhere; there are no Titicut-esque horrors here. Instead, Raynauld paints an intimate portrait of several of these men as they face various challenges getting through their days.

The men live in a privately run psychiatric household, one that’s clearly very well run. There’s Elysée, who was abandoned by his family for years but eventually reunited with them, who has a simple but endearing outlook on life. “I like to be filmed,” he tells Raynauld, practically begging for the attention the camera offers him.

But one of the most heartwrenching scenes come towards the end of the film, when Raynauld presents one of the men with her newborn baby. He clutches the child, and she asks him if he would have liked to have been a father. Yes, he responds, at which point she asks him if he’s ever been in love. You can see the years pouring through his mind, the opportunities lost due to his mental state. It’s at this point that the film approaches the poetic.

Kudos to Raynauld for her film, and mazel tov for the Jutra, but there seems to be something odd about the awards when this film wins and two of the most talked-about docs of last year, Bad Girl and Bacon, weren’t even nominated. Perhaps the Jutra committee needs to rethink their nomination process. :

Le Minot d’or screens from this Tuesday, May 21 to May 26 at the Cinémathèque québécoise in original French with English subtitles