Cinema
The True Nature of Bernadette
La Vraie Nature de Bernadette
Gilles Carle · 1972
Synopsis
Bernadette Brown leaves Montreal, her lawyer husband and comfort, and settles with her young son on a dilapidated farm. She wants to live simply, in the open air, and to give without counting, her body included; a few old men of the village take advantage. Her neighbour Thomas, a farmer in struggle, blocks the road with his tractor to protest against the abandonment of his village. Soon she is credited with the gift of healing and of making water spring forth, and she is taken for a saint.
Context
Micheline Lanctôt plays Bernadette Brown. The film was presented in competition at Cannes in 1972, the first Quebec feature to be so according to the magazine Cinema Canada, and drew nearly three hundred thousand viewers in France. Its shooting script and dialogue appeared the same year in L'Avant-scène, in Paris. The filmmaker combines in it satire of the return to the land, the crisis of the peasant world and popular devotion.
Who it is for
In Quebec French; a free and provocative rural fable, in which sex and religion intersect, for an adult audience.
Prizes and reception
Several Etrog awards, including those for direction, for best actress for Micheline Lanctôt and for supporting actor for Donald Pilon.
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