by BERTIE MANDELBLATT

Into every humourless, sanctimonious, self-mythologizing Quebec film a little laughter must fall, and that laughter fell for me about midway through Seraphin: Un homme et son péché. The moment came at the sight of the glorious and naked ass of Roy Dupuis. There he was, le grand Dupuis, the people’s prince—one arm raised, leaning against a window through which filtered daylight cast a gentle halo around his noble and manly behind.

This turgid melodrama is taken from the eponymous ’33 classic novel of avarice, corruption and all-around misery in rural Quebec. So that explains the characters, namely, our trio: the demonic, coffin-building, peasant-gouging, eyebrow-lifting Seraphin, the angelic Donalda, whose name is even tragic, and her eternal love Alexis, the flower of Quebec manhood (Dupuis), who must disappear into the wilderness to chop down trees, leaving Donalda to pay (with her life!) for the bankruptcy of her father’s general store. Not quite tied to the railroad tracks but pretty darn close. The age of the novel may well explain the laborious plot, which I think needs very little additional detail here.

What the novel doesn’t explain is the regrettable filmmaking, which, after all, took place in 2002, not 1933. The director and screenwriters not only chose to work with this particular novel, but they decided to apply the full power of 21st century cinematic technology to it as though we were still in 1933.

So all the non-1933 elements are subjected to the same melodramatic forces as the narrative: a score that swells and crashes at the many critical moments, endless shots of babbling brooks, hazy twilights and snow-whipped desolation. As if contemporary audiences are interested in the same simplifications and exaggerations as audiences were 70 years ago, only this time delivered with a contemporary visual style. Anyway, if you’re not so interested in melodrama this turgid, don’t go for Roy’s derrière. Frankly, after sitting through 128 minutes of this, it wasn’t glorious enough. :

Seraphin: Un homme et son péché opens Friday, Nov. 29

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