By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Louise Archambault
Starring: Juliette Gosselin | Macha Grenon | Sylvie Moreau
Country: canada
Year: 2005
Running time: 102
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425979/combined
Bruce says: “The human body contains 50 million cells and each one of those cells contains the genetic code of our heritage. It is certain that DNA determines things like hair color and the size of the foot. FAMILIA wonders if DNA is also responsible for our ability to love and our capacity for patience and understanding. Are we genetic prisoners or are we free to form our own identity?
“FAMILIA attempts to illustrate this ponderance by examining two sets of women from three generations: grandmother, mother, daughter. The mothers are the centerpieces in the melodrama. Michele (Sylvie Moreau ) has an addictive personality. She is a compulsive gambler who takes up with one man after another, always running out the door in crisis. Her mother (Micheline Lanctôt) cheats at cards and goes to Ibiza to have a good time. Her mother’s boyfriend follows Michele into the bathroom and gives her money so he can feel her up. Like mother, like daughter?
“Janine (Macha Grenon ) is Michele’s sister-in-law of sorts, at least that is what she would have been had Janine’s brother married Michele. He is the father of Michele’s daughter Margot (Mylène St-Saveur). Janine’s mother (Patricia Nolin) believes that shopping is the solution to all problems. Certainly intimacies such as kisses and hugs have no place in her relationship with Janine. Janine lives in a gorgeous home works hard as an interior decorator; her husband Charles is always away on business. Janine thinks her husband may have a mistress. Janine’s daughter Gabrielle (Juliette Gosselin) is, on the surface, a well-behaved child but she keeps a diary where she refers to her mother as Hitler, the control freak.
“When Michele and Margot are homeless and penniless Janine takes them in temporarily. As both women struggle to deal with their problems, their daughters are bonding and developing problems of their own. What becomes clear is that neither daughter wants to be like her mother. When a crisis develops with Margot, Michele’s mother says,’Why didn’t you come t me sooner.’ In turn, Michele is able to give her daughter love, her only currency. Janine in crisis turns to her mother for advice on how to deal with a philandering husband. He mother literally steps back from her daughter and suggests that Janine is responsible for her own problems. And Janine does the same with Gabrielle, blaming the victim.
“The film questions the emotional legacies that parents hand down to their children and looks at how children may choose to break away from behavioral patterns several generations strong. Both Janine and Michele are wildly manipulative – Michele manipulates through her neediness and addiction; Janine, through her compulsion to control every situation. By contrasting Janine and Michele in black and white, writer/director Archambault forces us to see things in shades of gray and helps us find humor is the worst of situations. The acting is wonderful and well suited for the melodrama. Archambault is overly ambitious in cramming so very much in such a relatively short time frame. For that she can be forgiven as the result is quite a gem. 5 cats”