MY INTERNSHIP IN CANADA written and directed by Philippe Falardeau, with Patrick Huard, Irdens Exantus, Suzanne Clément and Clémence Dufresne-Deslières. An Entertainment One release. 108 minutes. Subtitled. Original October 16 opening postponed to October 23.
It’s not a big, splashy world premiere, but Philippe Falardeau’s My Internship In Canada (see our review from TIFF) is a lovely little Canadian comedy. It’s a looser, goofier work from the writer/director than we’ve seen in a while, so when we sit down at TIFF I ask him how he came to make it. Turns out it came from an old friend, cinematographer André Turpin.
“He said, ‘I have an idea for you,'” Falardeau recalls. “‘It’s about an MP who gets a swing vote on abortion and everybody goes into his riding to try to convince him to vote one way or the other.’ And I said, ‘Oh, that’s great! What happens next?’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s your problem.'”
The trick, Falardeau explains, was changing the issue to a much more abstract one. Patrick Huard’s Steve Guibord now holds the swing vote on whether or not Canada should wade into military action in an unnamed nation. Falardeau wraps that question in the story of an unlikely friendship between the world-weary Guibord and his idealistic new intern, Haitian émigré Souverain (Irdens Exantus).
“He’s very green, he’s intelligent, he’s read all the philosophers and he thinks the way democracy works can be understood in a few pages of a Rousseau book – which is completely impossible,” Falardeau laughs. “And then you get a guy who doesn’t even know who Jean-Jacques Rousseau is, who has more knowledge of how politics works, and the two of them collide in a beautiful and very simple friendship.”
“I think that’s what the movie is about, actually,” says Huard of Steve and Souverain’s friendship.
“When you see how this young Haitian looks at our country, through his eyes – I mean, for him it’s the promised land. A place where people can vote and express themselves. They can argue without people getting killed, they can actually trust the people around them. And if they’re in danger, they can actually call the police. It’s all things that are a given for us, and to see that through his eyes in the movie is really refreshing.”
As Steve’s hawkish wife, Suzanne, Suzanne Clément – coming off a string of dramatic projects that included Terrance Odette’s Fall and Xavier Dolan’s Mommy – relished the chance to be funny, though she was a little self-conscious about it at the time.
“I had confidence in Philippe, and I pushed it a little bit,” Clément says. “For me, I pushed the limits. Watching it, I was like [groans], ‘Oh my god, okay, I went for it.’ But other people were saying, ‘No, no! You were fun!’ It’s just a question of perspective.”
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
