sharky_55 At the core of My Uncle Antoine is a coming-of-age story about a young Quebecan boy helping out his family with the store on Christmas Eve. But it is also rooted within the historical context of the Grande Noirceur, or The Great Darkness, a period of social unrest within the French Canadian province post World War 2 under the reign of the fiercely conservative Maurice Duplessis. For residents who have experienced this it rings true - the push of residents towards rural, menial occupations, the privilege and devotion afforded to the powerful Catholic church, the utter futility of worker strikes, and the opposition towards unions. Bathroom graffiti hastily scribbled seems to recognise the discontent with the political regime. Indeed, the asbestos mine is photographed in such a way that it envelopes and suffocates the small town like a great grey shroud, in a similar manner to how the lives of the low class Quebecans are subjugated and held in place by systems beyond their control. A miner's story, which bookends the film, tells of his singular attempt to quit his job and leave for a better existence as a logger. Suffice to say, it is an unsuccessful one. As switch over to the main storyline it takes on the boyish excitement of Benoit, who is helping his uncle and aunt set up the Christmas display for their general store. It is the mark of a small town that it is the show-piece that all the residents look forward to each year, and there is a little mock unveiling that takes place. When a shy young girl announces her engagement, the whole town cheers and ruffles the hair of the young groom-to-be and drinks to the happy couple. And they are all intimately familiar with the singing voice of aunt Cecile and how she acts as the serenader for all the big events. This warm family is also accompanied by a lively score that seems whipped up from the young, excited mind of Benoit himself; a fast-paced, melodic violin piece that is fit for a jig but which shows the whole town coming together for a snowball fight. Isn't Christmas the most lovely time of the year?The film is slow paced - it unveils these aspects of the community, along with oddities that Benoit is accustomed to. His uncle Antoine is also the town undertaker, and as such coffins line the walls and floors of the second floor; but this is initially just a playground for the young boy, a perfect moment of blossoming sexuality where he and Carmen have the urges, but not the knowledge or maturity to proceed (you'll notice how they almost immediately make up afterwards). There is that dreary sequence where the mine-owner tosses his yearly 'bonuses' at each house; even without showing their contents they look practically empty. The youth and kids excitedly fight and grab at the stockings while the parents and elderly watch glumly, as they have been through this many times and are wise not to get their hopes up. And Benoit and his friend sit somewhere in the middle; they aren't swayed by the stockings, but pelt the owner's horse with snowballs, perhaps not quite old enough to lose those wide grins on their faces. Even as his uncle is called out for a grim job on Christmas Eve to collect a corpse he still has that big grin on his face; he begs to go as if he was running out the door with his friends, and the lively score once again characterises his excitement and joy. But then he is silent as they approach the tragedy-stricken family. He sits while they quietly eat the lavish dinner the mother has prepared, as if they were just visitors, and is stoic as the children enjoy the gift of candy, which is given a similar treatment as the stockings beforehand. Could he have suddenly realised the gravity of the situation in a way that the grinning teenager earlier could not? Brault's camera first and foremost shows its passion through its quick, frantic zooms - and there is not one more important than the reveal of the dead boy, scarcely older than Benoit himself, a frozen, lifeless mirror-image of himself. It is in that moment we know that his grin will never be as wide, his playfulness never as naive or mindless. What follows after is just a brutal reaffirmation of the fact. In a heartbreaking monologue, Antoine spills out a confession that is not only intensely personal but reflects the social context of the period and the suffocation of the political regime. We see Benoit's new look, his stony-faced stare boring into the heart of Cecile who knows that she has been caught out, but does not immediately recognise this Benoit. And in that final, haunting POV shot, a new consciousness behind the camera, as if he is seeing for this first time, not just looking. The mastery of My Uncle Antoine is that is is so tragic because it invests so much into the small Quebecan town, and the intricate, painful details. This elevates the emotional trauma to new levels. See the tenderness of a final sexual embrace between Jos and Madame Pouline, and how they come together in the barn. See how the exact same treatment is applied to aunt Cecile's affair; not with the usual aggressive lust, but with an air of sweetness in how Fernand stares at her and tentatively compliments her dress. Spare a though for Carmen, who think she is old enough to be wearing lipstick, before hastily washing it off when Benoit teases her about it. In her father's eyes, she is less a daughter and more a worker.

vivalarsx This Canadian coming-of-age tale is a magnificent example of how powerful a "small" character piece can be. Young Benoit (Jacques Gagnon, an amateur whose expressive face could put many a more-established actor to shame) lives with his uncle and aunt (Jean Duceppe and Olivette Thibault) in a tiny village in which the primary employment opportunity is mining asbestos. Over the course of a deceptively low key Christmas Eve and Day in the early 1940s, everything Benoit thinks he knows about his small world will be turned on its ear and he will become a man. There is possibly no way to do justice (at least for me) to the precision and delicacy with which the director Claude Jutra infuses the humdrum of day-to-day life. So much happens, and yet it could be argued that "nothing" really happens. In reality, Life happens. While some events are more dramatic and life-changing than others, most everything is given its full due, presented with perceptive grace. (A small barrel of nails taking up precious walking space in the general store that Benoit's relatives own—his uncle is also the town undertaker-- is just as prominent a storyline as some of the more devastating turns of events—and when it is finally picked up to be put away, the film gets its biggest laugh by having the young man carrying it still lift his leg high to step over it.) Jutra isn't afraid to take his time and thoroughly investigate all aspects of life in this depressing little town; the primary foci are on sex and death—about which Benoit will learn much, though he can't make sense of all of it. What's most amazing about Mon oncle Antoine isn't that it's unlike anything we've seen before, but that it shows us the utterly familiar and universal moments of life and makes us see them with a depth we're unused to. But what I've never seen anything like in any movie is an astonishing scene between Benoit and Carmen (Lyne Champagne, another emotive amateur), the young store clerk who his uncle and aunt have basically bought from her poor father. Upstairs in the storeroom of the store, Benoit and Carmen flirt and chase each other among the caskets, she in the bridal veil a customer waits for downstairs. They end up falling to the floor, and he puts his hand matter-of-factly on her breast. She turns away, crying, and flees; Benoit, shaken, lies down on the floor and realizes they've been observed by the store's chief clerk Fernand (played by Jutra himself). It is a simple, but almost staggering scene of such allusive beauty, with both characters caught up in a moment they can't quite make sense of. And the "sex and death" metaphor is unstressed, allowing us to try and comprehend all the subtext without a lot of editorializing. It is in the last third of the movie, though, that Jutra brings all his themes together. A young boy has died suddenly, and Antoine has to drive hours away through the snow on a horse-drawn carriage to retrieve the body. Benoit begs Aunt Cecile to let him go (Uncle Antoine warns him, "Don't get all excited"), and the literal journey to manhood begins. But Jutra never bogs the journey down, full as it is, with the weight of self-importance; we watch what happens, we process what it means to Benoit, and we are allowed to make sense of it on our own. Jutra stresses nothing, he just shows it. (Benoit has a moment when he has to touch the dead boy's body. He hesitates for a moment, and suddenly takes hold, and I thought, "I've just watched a boy become a man, right this second." His nascent maturity allows Benoit to react as he does when the trip back home—and the arrival at home, as well—completely knock him out of the world he's known; he's angry, he's hurt, but he's not confused. He sees what's what, and accepts it for what it is. I wish I could say Antoine is perfect, because it comes awfully damn close. There is a really silly dream sequence near the end that takes all the allusion we've witnessed and makes it rather obvious, but this is about 90 seconds out of a movie, and—though disappointingly lumpy—can't undo everything Jutra has so phenomenally laid out before. This movie affected me as few movies have; certainly nothing this year (with more than a few really fine films) comes close. In stressing again how small it is (which, as I've stated more than a few times, is right up my alley, aesthetically), I attempt to not overhype it. It's tiny, but it is as powerful a movie as I've ever seen. **** and Most Highly Recommended

jandesimpson As a mid-teenager whose voice had probably broken a few months before, Benoit peeps at an adult world he is only beginning to understand. It is not a pretty sight. We first see him looking at the body of a middle aged man in an open coffin. His uncle, Antoine, is the small town undertaker. A little while later during a session as an alter boy, adolescent curiosity tempts him to take a swig of the communion wine. A few moments later he sees the priest also taking a surreptitious slurp, Nothing to the disillusions he is about to experience, but a foretaste. There are those artists who leave us but one work and a few fragments to remember them by. Such was the French Canadian film director, Claude Jutra. He contracted Altzheimer's in his early fifties and drowned in the St.Lawrence River, presumably suicide. His one full length feature "Mon Oncle Antoine" is nothing short of a masterpiece, not just a little gem but a major work that is among the most perfect rite of passage films ever made. In addition it paints a superb picture of a small town community, Black Lake, Quebec, dominated by the slag hill of an asbestos mine, the time, a winter in the '40's. Much of the film centres on the town's main store run by Antoine, his wife Cecile and their assistant Fernand played by Jutra himself. Antoine and Cecile are childless but have adopted the orphaned Benoit and offer shelter to Carmen an unwanted girl who helps with the running of the shop. The store is the town's meeting place and much is made of the annual ritual of decorating the window with a nativity scene and opening the curtains that have been hiding it on the morning of Christmas Eve to the group of eagerly anticipating onlookers who have gathered outside. This is a highlight for a town in which nothing much happens in the way of entertainment. It contrasts with a later scene where the mine owner drives his horse-drawn vehicle down the main street throwing packages of tawdry trinkets for the town's children which no one seems to want, such is the contempt in which he is held. It is a film in which small incidents such as these skilfully paint a comprehensive picture of what it felt to live in just such a small town, one December, a generation back. In addition to those associated with the store we are introduced to a family living in a farmhouse in the frozen wastes a few mile away. The father, thoroughly disillusioned with his work at the asbestos mine, leaves his wife and children to look after the farm while he tries to get better employment lumbering in another part of the country. While he is away their eldest son falls unexpectedly ill and dies, prompting the distraught wife to telephone for the services of undertaker Antoine late Christmas Eve. The journey into the night with a body box that Antoine, already the worse for drink, has to make, assisted by Benoit, forms the great climax that is to be the awakening of the youth to the absolute inadequacy of his uncle to the task. His single accusation "Drunkard" when the mission goes completely awry says it all. The boy has left his playful youth around the store behind and has fully experienced the bitter reality of the adults around him. On his return he even catches something of his aunt's infidelity with the assistant. In a film rich in memorable images none is more unforgettable than the final shot of Benoit looking through the farmhouse window at the grief stricken family with the open box and corpse the father, having just returned, has retrieved from the snow. The boy has become a man overnight. His life will never be quite the same again.

tpaigeba I only rented this stinker because of its relatively high ratings. It totally sucked! I cannot imagine how anyone would think this a good movie - even an OK movie. None of the characters had ANY redeeming qualities of any kind. To varying degrees they were each selfish and mean-spirited - or abused and damaged personalities who hadn't a clue about the spirit of Christmas (when this takes place!) I know Canadians and like them - but I cannot think that even THEY would think this a good movie. I'd rather a sharp stick in the eye than watch this offensive movie again. A colossal waste of time and money. Do not believe the person who wrote the opinion that it was "worth watching." This person probably would enjoy having a dentist drill their teeth without anesthesia, too. Don't mean to be unkind but for the life of me I cannot imagine what this person was thinking. Unless they had ulterior motives. Maybe s/he was the director or the producer. If so, I'd like to ask them to give me back my money. If your money is important to you - save it instead of renting this piece of drek - or rent something (anything!) else. I'm running out of good reasons NOT TO rent this film. If I were Canadian I'd be ASHAMED that it's supposed to be a favorite Canadian flick. If so, I would say that those who think so are definitely in need of great quantities of powerful drugs. YECK!