MONTREAL – There was no shortage of controversy leading up to this year’s Jutra Awards and Monsieur Lazhar’s virtual sweep of the major awards Sunday night isn’t likely to shut down the debate.
Obviously the Monsieur Lazhar team is super happy following the film’s domination of 14th Soirée des Jutra but even those not great in math can figure that if Philippe Falardeau’s fine movie won everything in sight, there were plenty of films that came away with a lot fewer statuettes.
The Jutra Awards, the Quebec film awards, were held at Théâtre St. Denis Sunday night, a ceremony broadcast live on Radio-Canada Television.
But it’s hard to whine about Monsieur Lazhar winning big at the Jutras – it richly deserves the honour. If other films came up short, it’s just a testament to the fact that la belle province produced so many A-list movies last year.
Monsieur Lazhar won in seven of the nine categories it was nominated in, only losing in the race for the best-actor statuette and as the film with the most success outside of Quebec. Falardeau’s touching, intimate drama about an Algerian refugee who takes-over a Grade 6 class after the teacher commits suicide won the Jutras for best film, director (Falardeau), screenplay (also Falardeau), supporting actress (11-year-old Sophie Nélisse), supporting actor (13-year-old Émilien Néron), sound and for original music (Martin Léon).
Get daily National news
This blockbuster evening for Monsieur Lazhar comes just three days after it also took most of the coveted prizes at the Genie Awards, the Canadian film awards, in Toronto. It won six Genies, including for best film, director, adapted screenplay, actor (for Mohamed Said Fellag) and supporting actress. After all this, you gotta figure Falardeau is not feeling all that bitter about not winning at the Academy Awards, where his film was nominated in the foreign-language category.
Now there’s no doubt that Monsieur Lazhar deserves all this Jutra love. But its triumph shut out other quality films. André Forcier’s Coteau Rouge, for example, was the second-most nominated film at the Jutras, with eight nods. But the biting satirical comedy came away Sunday empty-handed and that is likely to lead to further grumbling about the voting process. Café de Flore, which had seven nominations, only won three Jutra trophies, two of which were in craft categories.
Jutra organizers included a note on ballots saying it was not necessary to have seen all of the films in order to vote.
When this was made public a few days back, many in the industry were mighty peeved, including Forcier. He said since his film hadn’t made much money at the box office – and hence hadn’t been seen by all that many people – he didn’t expect to win anything Sunday night. It turns out Forcier’s pessimism was well-founded.
There has also been much complaining about the fact that the Jutra nominations were decided by a 16-person jury, a system brought in two years ago. Prior to that, the nominations were decided by members of all the different local film associations and guilds.
This year, a couple of major films were snubbed by this jury, notably the critically-acclaimed films En terrains connus and Funkytown.
There were in fact some major awards won by films other than Monsieur Lazhar. Gilbert Sicotte prevailed as best actor for his masterful portrayal of a melancholic aging car salesman in Sébastien Pilote’s fine Le Vendeur, which I think might just be the best Québécois film of the past year.
Vanessa Paradis nabbed the best-actress Jutra for her role in the Canada-France co-production Café de Flore. The French thespian burns up the screen as the mother of a young boy with Down’s Syndrome in 1960s Paris.
Also Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies, which cleaned up at last year’s Jutras, won as the film that had the most success outside of Quebec. That was no big surprise, given that it made it to the Oscars and picked up awards at festivals all over the globe. Patrick Doyon’s beautiful Oscar-nominated National Film Board of Canada short Dimanche won as best animated film.
Sylvie Moreau and Yves Pelletier did a stand-up job hosting the gala, which might not have been the most exciting of TV shows but was a useful reminder of the vitality of our film culture. And that in the end is why the film biz chez nous invented the Jutras 14 years ago – to celebrate the great movies we make here. So stop all that grumbling!
Comments
Want to discuss? Please read our Commenting Policy first.