DVD Marécages

Marecages (Wetlands) is an example of the numerous interesting French language movies being made in Quebec, that never get distributed (except later perhaps on DVD) in the United States, let alone in the non French speaking parts of Canada itself. This one is a grim story of a dairy farm during hard times, centered on a 14 year old boy. His father dies in an accident with a grain cart, for which the boy takes some blame because of his negligence; he also takes blame for the death of his brother earlier in the family story. When another man tries to fill his father's shoes by courting the woman and helping out on the property, the son takes a dislike to him. Nevertheless the man takes the boy to a local night club where women pole dance, to help bond with him. But the boy is more interested in men, as we see when he watches another man urinate, and later follows that man into a shower in a fair. When the man who is trying to supplant the father forces himself on the mother and she rejects him, things come to a violent end as the man kills some cows, and we hear the ominous sound of rain gathering in the background.(In an earlier scene we had seen a calf die as it was being extricated from its mother.)In trying to say some things about masculinity and patriarchy,director Guy Edoin makes his movie somewhat more melodramatic than it may need to be, but he definitely has an eye and keeps us interested in what he is presenting. Hopefully we will see more good work from him in the future.