MONTREAL – When filmmaker Denys Arcand was thinking of which other profession most resembled his, he came up with one that may not appear obvious at first blush.
“I suddenly found that architects were really close to filmmakers,” he told a news conference Tuesday.
“You’re working with a team. You’re dealing with all sorts of difficulties, the weather outside. You’re dealing with a client. I’m dealing with a producer, I’m dealing with a distributor, and so on.
“It’s an artistic job, but it’s also an extremely practical job.”
The culmination of Arcand’s thought process is Le regne de la beaute (An Eye for Beauty), which comes out on more than 80 Quebec screens on May 15.
The movie from the renowned director focuses on Luc, a young Quebec architect (played by Eric Bruneau) who appears to have the perfect life in the scenic Charlevoix region northeast of Quebec City.
That idyllic existence is shaken when he is invited to sit on an architecture committee in Toronto and meets mysterious Lindsay (Melanie Merkosky), who changes his life.
Arcand said he became interested in architecture after his initial musings on the profession. That’s when he met some architects.
He wanted the film based in the country and for Luc to be someone who worked alone.
“Because I lived in the country for a long time — for 15 years when I was young — I knew about this type of life, where you have a few friends and you’re very close to one another,” said Arcand, whose previous films include the Oscar-nominated The Decline of the American Empire and the Oscar-winning The Barbarian Invasions.
“And because you’re close to one another, you have secrets and everything is not said.”
Arcand is hoping his passion for the topic will be shared by film enthusiasts.
“You just have to trust that if it captivates you for a year, two years, then it’s worthwhile … You hope it’s going to be fascinating or interesting for other people to see.”
For now, there are no plans to have the film released elsewhere in Canada.
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