Recovering Québec Culture: The Feature Films of Bernard Émond

Abstract

This article presents the feature films of Bernard Émond as being a sustained critique of Québec's Quiet Revolution. It posits that Émond displays strong nationalist tendencies as well as leftist political commitments, which might indicate that he is like many Québec filmmakers of his generation. But Émond is strongly influenced by a certain kind of conservatism, of the sort that has recently been enunciated by the controversial Québec historian Éric Bedard. In many ways Émond, like Bédard, is a “Red Tory,” being very close ideologically to the English-Canadian philosopher George Grant. Ideologically speaking, though, Émond is also very close to a number of important European filmmakers, such as Laurent Cantet, Ermanno Olmi or Kryzstof Kiselowski. Overall, his vision of Québec is of a place that is defined by an intense spiritual malaise, with a culture that is being made weaker by the forces of a capitalist-led globalization. The article focuses on all of the feature films that Émond has made up to 2012, and pays particular attention to his trilogy on the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity: La Neuvaine (The Novena, 2005), Contre toute espérance (Summit Circle, 2007) and La Donation (The Legacy, 2009). Because it was released so close to the press time of this article, Émond's most recent film, Tout ce que tu possédes (2012) is not considered here.