Mon oncle Antoine

Claude Jutra
1971, 110 minutes

Fiction

Synopsis

Ce film, dont l'action remonte aux environs de 1940, reconstitue l'atmosphère qui régnait dans une petite ville minière du Québec, la veille de Noël, seul jour de l'année où les usines fermaient leurs portes. Insouciante pour quelques heures, la population, rassemblée au magasin général, oublie sa pauvreté et se livre à la joie des Fêtes. Aux aguets, un garçon de quinze ans, attentif aux conversations et gestes de ses aînés, découvre à travers les êtres qui l'entourent l'univers des adultes, le monde des sensations et sa rudesse, celui de la souffrance et des petites folies auxquelles on se raccroche et qui prennent, pour un instant, l'air du bonheur. (Résumé ONF)

There was a time when the general store was the crossroads of life, a place where a boy could learn all he needed for the way ahead -especially when his uncle was the storekeeper, and also the undertaker, and the nephew often called upon to lend a hand. This film recalls such a store in a village in the asbestos mining area of Quebec in the early 1940s. The film presents a hundred-and-one vignettes of village life - all the bitter-sweet nostalgia with which a man might remember the events that thrust him into manhood. The action takes place on Christmas Eve - the one time of the year when the mine closed its doors, and the store bustled with humanity. For a few hours the villagers could forget their poverty and converge on the store for gossip and revelry. In the midst of it all was Uncle Antoine, customary ebullience and ribald humour whetted by occasional recourse to the gin bottle, and always somewhere in the background, his nephew Jacques taking it all in. But for Jacques this night was to bring sudden initiation into some of the harsher, cruder realities of life, even acquaintance with tragedy and death. Mon oncle Antoine is about a Quebec that makes no headlines but reflects the whole of life, the ebb and flow of hope and despair that might be in anyone's memory. (Résumé ONF)

Ce film est une production de l'Office national du film du Canada.