by MATTHEW HAYS

It's funny to hear a filmmaker bite the hand that feeds. But I suppose when you've got a long-running track record like veteran Quebec writer-director Claude Fournier, you don't feel so daunted by the powers-that-be.

"I was very pleased to be able to make a film that no asshole from Telefilm would read and ask me to change," Fournier says of his latest production, Je n'aime que toi (English title: My Only Love). The funding for this, Fournier reports, came in the sweetest way. Last summer, Telefilm offered filmmakers with a track record a certain amount of funding, based on prior successes. Fournier, the director behind such projects as J'en suis and The Tin Flute, managed to get $700,000.

The catch? "They told me if I didn't shoot before March 31, I wouldn't be eligible. I wasn't about to give that up!"

Seeking screenplay

So Fournier began to look through his old scripts to find something he could shoot. He didn't have anything, save the beginnings of a novel that he'd started five years ago. Also titled Je n'aime que toi, the book told the story of an ageing Quebec novelist who finds himself mired in severe writer's block. After forming a strange bond with a prostitute, the writer (played here by Michel Forget) uses her experiences as the source for his latest novel. She (Noémie Godin-Vigneau) plays along, giving him the delicious details of her professional life as a sex worker. Nothing, of course, is ultimately quite as it seems, and Forget is left both obsessed with his inspiration and a hit in the literary scene. Fournier has loaded the film with funny inside cameos, including publisher Jacques Lanctot, journalist Julie Snyder and writer Dany Laferrière.

The casting of Lanctot as a literary agent had a strange and unintended effect on Fournier and the film. Lanctot read the screenplay and told Fournier that he thought it would make a great novel; Fournier responded that that was the form he'd originally intended it to take. Lanctot said he wished to publish the work as a screenplay, but Fournier argued that screenplays are too dull to read. Lanctot finally convinced Fournier to write up Je n'aime que toi in novel form - the book is slated for release next month. "It's been a strange evolution," admits Fournier.

Runaway to runaway?

Taken with Fournier's last directorial effort, The Book of Eve - which concerned an ageing woman (Claire Bloom) who leaves her husband later in life - it's clear the filmmaker has become more concerned with themes of mortality and getting older. "I guess that's natural. I'm 72, so you start thinking about the fact that you're not going to be around forever. This film felt like a farewell to operating a camera too. It was nostalgic in many ways. I had a car accident many years ago, and it's been catching up with me lately. Which means I can't really operate a camera anymore. This has had a huge impact on me psychologically. I'm just so used to doing both, camera and directing. For me, it's a big if as to whether or not I can keep doing films without handling the camera."

Fournier feels that Quebec's film industry could be in for a seismic shift in the coming years. The strengthening dollar, in addition to Governor Schwarzenegger's pledge to keep more runaway production in California, could mean the brakes get slammed in the now-lucrative studio productions shooting here. "This sort of boom is not going to last forever. It's more sad for some technicians and a certain part of the industry, like the local studios. But for Canadian and Quebec films, it's probably going to be better. The American shoots have totally changed the way we do films here. I worked in France over the summer with some very big names, and they weren't all asking for Winnebagos, trailers, and that sort of thing. Here, the extras are practically demanding trailers. It's pushed costs up much, much higher.

"I'm heartened by what I see in Quebec cinema, films like Invasions barbares, which are personal, but have broad appeal too."

Je n'aime que toi opens Friday, Jan. 23

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