Back to school special 1.
From the lakehouse to the university. From the Laurentians to l’Université de Montréal.
Denis Héroux’s scandalous l’Initiation is a tale of the country and the city, at least in its early stages, when the film plays upon tensions between leisure and labour, the Laurentians and the modern spaces of late sixties Montreal (lUniversité de Montréal, Hotel Bonaventure, Place Ville-Marie, the Metro, etc.), anticipating key aspects of Denys Arcand’s The Decline of the American Empire (1986) by roughly 15 years. But mostly it’s a bittersweet tale of sexual awakening, one that stars Chantal Renaud (whose life is a snapshot of the Quiet Revolution: yé-yé singer, actress, script writer, and, eventually, the wife of former politician and Parti Québécois leader Bernard Landry) and Jacques Riberolles (Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, among many titles) and co-stars the legendary Danielle Ouimet (Valérie, also by Héroux).
L’Initiation (1970), dir. Héroux—prod. Cinépix
[late summer; early fall; waterskiing; motor-boating; sunbathing; the Laurentians; Université de Montréal; bookstores; post-secondary education; Maple Syrup Porn; Danielle Ouimet]
aj