Author: Elise Guilbault

Format: NTSC

Release Date: 14-10-2003

Details: Amazon.ca In documentaries like trial by fire, Instant and Patience and its masterwork, Those with a light step die without leaving a trace, Bernard Émond distinguished himself by the empathy, poetry and modesty with which he leaned on the broken lives of beings marked by the misfortune of their social or emotional condition. . His first fiction feature film, The woman who drinks is part of this line. Paulette, an alcoholic magnificently interpreted by Élise Guilbault, focuses, at the end of her life, on three key moments of her existence: her meeting with an influential notable (Michel Forget), who made her his mistress and installed her in the apartment where she spent her life; her marriage to an unfaithful man (Luc Picard), who deepened her misfortune and plunged her into alcoholism; and the night of drinking that cost him custody of his son and irretrievably destroyed his existence. Constructed in a series of flashbacks linked by a narrative that is both dry and poetic, and filmed almost entirely in a unique setting, this rigorous and demanding film (selected by the Cannes International Critics' Week) seduces by the originality from his outlook on alcoholism – shown as a normal response to an unbearable reality – and from his heroine's refusal to feel sorry for herself. If this desperate closed session shows some lengths, we remain impressed by the frankness of this unvarnished portrait of a being fully assuming his destiny: that of a woman who could only discover what she was by losing little pretty much everything she had... --Georges Privet

UPC: 807581500178

EAN: 0807581500178

Languages: English

Binding: DVD

Item Condition: UsedVeryGood