As a mid-teenager whose voice had probably broken a few months before, Benoit peeps at an adult world he is only beginning to understand. It is not a pretty sight. We first see him looking at the body of a middle aged man in an open coffin. His uncle, Antoine, is the small town undertaker. A little while later during a session as an alter boy, adolescent curiosity tempts him to take a swig of the communion wine. A few moments later he sees the priest also taking a surreptitious slurp, Nothing to the disillusions he is about to experience, but a foretaste. There are those artists who leave us but one work and a few fragments to remember them by. Such was the French Canadian film director, Claude Jutra. He contracted Altzheimer's in his early fifties and drowned in the St.Lawrence River, presumably suicide. His one full length feature "Mon Oncle Antoine" is nothing short of a masterpiece, not just a little gem but a major work that is among the most perfect rite of passage films ever made. In addition it paints a superb picture of a small town community, Black Lake, Quebec, dominated by the slag hill of an asbestos mine, the time, a winter in the '40's. Much of the film centres on the town's main store run by Antoine, his wife Cecile and their assistant Fernand played by Jutra himself. Antoine and Cecile are childless but have adopted the orphaned Benoit and offer shelter to Carmen an unwanted girl who helps with the running of the shop. The store is the town's meeting place and much is made of the annual ritual of decorating the window with a nativity scene and opening the curtains that have been hiding it on the morning of Christmas Eve to the group of eagerly anticipating onlookers who have gathered outside. This is a highlight for a town in which nothing much happens in the way of entertainment. It contrasts with a later scene where the mine owner drives his horse-drawn vehicle down the main street throwing packages of tawdry trinkets for the town's children which no one seems to want, such is the contempt in which he is held. It is a film in which small incidents such as these skilfully paint a comprehensive picture of what it felt to live in just such a small town, one December, a generation back. In addition to those associated with the store we are introduced to a family living in a farmhouse in the frozen wastes a few mile away. The father, thoroughly disillusioned with his work at the asbestos mine, leaves his wife and children to look after the farm while he tries to get better employment lumbering in another part of the country. While he is away their eldest son falls unexpectedly ill and dies, prompting the distraught wife to telephone for the services of undertaker Antoine late Christmas Eve. The journey into the night with a body box that Antoine, already the worse for drink, has to make, assisted by Benoit, forms the great climax that is to be the awakening of the youth to the absolute inadequacy of his uncle to the task. His single accusation "Drunkard" when the mission goes completely awry says it all. The boy has left his playful youth around the store behind and has fully experienced the bitter reality of the adults around him. On his return he even catches something of his aunt's infidelity with the assistant. In a film rich in memorable images none is more unforgettable than the final shot of Benoit looking through the farmhouse window at the grief stricken family with the open box and corpse the father, having just returned, has retrieved from the snow. The boy has become a man overnight. His life will never be quite the same again.
Review of My Uncle Antoine
