T.V. Hebdo December 3, 1993

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=125 BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <IMG SRC="3dc55210.gif" border=0 width="85" height="289" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> T.V. Hebdo December  3, 1993</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="3d81cd50.jpg" border=0 width="284" height="213" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"><IMG SRC="3da1cd50.jpg" border=0 width="284" height="213" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>T.V. Hebdo December  3, 1993</B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Roy Dupuis plays an anti-hero</B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Roy Dupuis a vacuum-cleaner salesman? Difficult to imagine. However, the hottest actor in Quebec plays a very ordinary "good guy" in the amazingly titled film </B><B>It was the 12</B><B>th</B><B> of the 12</B><B>th</B><B> and Chili had the blues</B><B>. His co-star : Lucie Laurier, a young actress discovered in </B><B>Love Me</B><B>. In charge : Charles Binamé, director of </B><B>Blanche</B><B>, here making his first full length feature. Welcome to the Public Baths**, transformed into a railway station by the magic of cinema.</B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>A young man with slicked-back hair and a young girl in a red beret are sitting opposite each other in a station restaurant. He lights a cigarette, she’s counting the tiles on the ceiling. "What’s your name?" he asks, in a hesitant tone. "Chili, like the sauce."</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Cut!" Suddenly, as if by magic, the station comes alive. In the waiting room one floor below a couple of dozen people, frozen like statues during the filming of the scene, stretch their stiff legs and resume their conversations where they had left off, until the next "Silence! Cameras! Rolling!"</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>It is the 10</B><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#00FFFF" FACE="Verdana" ><B>th</B></FONT><B> of November <<1993>>, the 16</B><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#00FFFF" FACE="Verdana" ><B>th</B></FONT><B> day of filming </B><B>Chili’s Blues</B><B>, a $2.4million Quebecois production with 700 extras and 45 speaking parts. Playing the leads are Roy Dupuis and an almost unknown 18-year-old Lucie Laurier. The other major role in the film is that of the station where all the action takes place, give or take a scene or two. A troublesome character because of its specific needs : it was impossible to find a candidate which met the demands of the screenplay. But impossible isn’t in the vocabulary of the cinema. So here, making its entrance, is the Public Baths, a disused art deco style swimming pool on the rue Amherst, right in the middle of Montreal.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>After an intense "makeover" lasting several weeks, the illusion is perfect. The upstairs restaurant, the waiting room on the ground floor, the snack bar, the magazine kiosk with the headlines about the recent assassination of Kennedy (Chili had the blues on the 12</B><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#00FFFF" FACE="Verdana" ><B>th</B></FONT><B> of the 12</B><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#00FFFF" FACE="Verdana" ><B>th</B></FONT><B> 1963), the numerous extras in the clothes and hairstyles of the period. The only things missing are the trains, but the audience will see only the smoke when the film is released next spring.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The restaurant scene, a simple conversation, will last only two minutes on the screen, but takes a good part of the day to put in the can. Take after take Roy and Lucie, or rather Pierre-Paul and Chili repeat the same lines, redo the same movements round the same silly details, with a few minor variations. When the time comes for the midday break the two actors, who have been up since dawn, seem a bit tired out. But happy.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"I wanted to take part in this project," explains Roy Dupuis simply, in a quiet voice. Squeezed into a skimpy overcoat, almost stooping, his hair plastered to his skull in the pre-Beatles fashion, he is no athletic Adonis, but all vacuum-cleaner salesman. Which is just as well, because that’s exactly his character. Where is the Roy who made girls faint with a nonchalant roll of his muscular shoulders? Where is the young dropout prostitute from </B><B>Being at Home with Claude</B><B>, or the reckless young reporter in </B><B>Scoop</B><B>?</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Pierre-Paul is a good guy," explains Dupuis. "Not a revolutionary nor a philosopher. He hasn’t got any exceptional brainpower, he’s one of the crowd - and that, that’s what’s interesting." Charles Binamé, the director, goes further. "It’s a very different part for Roy. I wanted to put him in a position where he was expressing himself in a way he has never been seen before in the cinema. It’s a real invention. I’m not the only one who is determined to find something different; he too wants to get to the essence of this character. He’s sometimes frustrated when he sees the rushes. He says to me, ‘The character doesn’t seem to be coming out.’ I think he’ll be pleasantly surprised. He is a great actor."</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>In order to play Pierre-Paul Roy didn’t hesitate to swallow his pride and attend an audition - "the first in a very long time. And yes, I got the part! (he laughs). When you want something you have to fight for it."</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>And ‘it’ is a watertight screenplay - "the best I’ve read in a long time," says the actor who gets sent a lot of them, from here, from France, and even for some time now, from the United States. "I never think in terms of a career. I do what I like to do." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Written by José Fréchette, who in 1987 gave us the beautiful novel </B><B>Lisa’s Father</B><B>, </B><B>Chili’s Blues</B><B> tells a love story that is very simple but presented from an original angle, that of a fleeting but deeply moving encounter. In the toilets of a Montreal station paralysed by a snow storm, Pierre-Paul finds Chili, a pretty schoolgirl, with a gun in her mouth. He wants to stop her from committing suicide; she doesn’t want to have anything more to do with life.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The two strangers win each other over, open up to each other, close down again, desire each other, yield to each other, and split up - in short, they conduct a complete love affair from the first quiver to the last kiss, in the space of a few hours. Round about them swirl the snowflakes and an anonymous crowd in which we recognise several faces in passing : Pierre Curzi, Francine Ruel, Joëlle Morin and Fanny Lauzier.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Chili was never able to fill the void created by the death of her father," explains actress Lucie Laurier. "She is a little disturbed ….. but nothing like in </B><B>Love Me</B><B>." Those who saw her as a very troubled young prostitute in this hard-hitting 1991 film have certainly not forgotten her. But Lucie Laurier, sister of actress Charlotte << Maude in </B><B>J’en Suis</B><B>, Gabrielle in </B><B>Scoop</B><B>>> and Angela, a contortionist with the </B><B>Cirque du Soleil</B><B> <<Circus of the Sun>>, herself the mother of a 10 month old little boy, is no newcomer to the business. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Her cinema debut goes back to 1985 (in </B><B>The Old man and the Child</B><B> with Jean Duceppe) when she was 9 years old. "Chili is my first leading role. And it’s true that it scares me. Before filming I was so nervous, really unbearable. But I’m always like this. I know I could mess it up. It doesn’t get any easier."</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Her boss, Charles Binamé doesn’t share her fears. "She is excellent," he says without hesitation. "She acts with her instincts, like Roy." After a successful career spanning 22 years, during which he made, amongst other things, a mountain of TV commercials including the 4 year Pepsi series with Claude Meunier, Charles Binamé is making his first full length feature. This challenge, even before the start of filming, gave him his share of cold sweats. "It’s a healthy, stimulating fear." It’s the same fear he felt when he agreed to direct </B><B>Blanche</B><B> after the mega-success of </B><B>Les Filles de Caleb</B><B>. And we know the outcome of that.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The midday break comes to an end. Lucie goes to take a breath of air outside in the company of a visitor, Claude Chamberlan, director of the Festival of New Cinema and Video. Roy remains in his corner, lost in his thoughts. "He doesn’t mix much with the crew between takes," explains Charles. "Not out of snobbery, he is just in his own world, being his character. He is not the Roy I know. When I talk to him on the set between scenes I almost always call him Pierre-Paul."</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>As for Madeleine Henrie, the production director, her first concern is the state of the weather. "I hope there will be a great big storm on the 24</B><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#00FFFF" FACE="Verdana" ><B>th</B></FONT><B>." It’s on that day, the final day of shooting, that they are going to film the station (alias the Public Baths) being lashed by a blizzard. Even if Mother Nature doesn’t oblige, it doesn’t matter. The cinema will play God once more and the residents of Rue Amherst may have to get their shovels out in front of the whole world.</B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B> <IMG SRC="3d4341d0.jpg" border=0 width="308" height="29" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"><IMG SRC="3d4341d0.jpg" border=0 width="308" height="29" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>7 JOURS 3 SEPT. 1994                                             </B><A HREF="id4.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="1994 Articles"><U><B><IMG SRC="1be3e220.gif" border=0 width="62" height="34" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><B>   </B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>