MON ONCLE ANTOINE Movie Review

This portrait of a young boy's Christmas in a small Quebec mining town in the 1940s is no saccharine, rose-colored remembrance; Canada's gifted Claude Jutra has blended the natural beauty of the surroundings with the community's grim economic realities to create a bittersweet, heartbreakingly beautiful masterwork. The small joys and humiliations that the boy, his working-class family, and his wonderful, generous-spirited uncle experience daily seem unfocused at first, as if we were seeing random incidents; before long, however, Mon Oncle Antoine becomes a fully formed portrait of a way of life that takes on a surprising emotional power. You may find yourself overwhelmed by moments that you don't fully absorb until the film's over, and there are images (and an extraordinarily haunting musical score) that you will always remember. Quiet, devastating, brilliant.

NEXT STOP … Act of the Heart, King of the Hill, Sugar Cane Alley

1971 104m/C CA Jean Duceppe, Olivette Thibault; D: Claude Jutra. VHS HMV, HMV, AUD