Paule Baillargeon

Trente tableaux

Trente tableaux is a 2011 autobiographical feature documentary by Quebec film director Paule Baillargeon, made during her two-year film residency with the National Film Board of Canada. It is an anthology film composed of 30 short portraits—or tableau vivant—of her 66 years of life to date, reflecting her experiences as a woman in Quebec's changing society.

Days of Darkness

Jean-Marc is a man without qualities living in times that are out of joint. His wife and children ignore him; he's a mid-level government functionary in Montreal doing his job without care. He has an active imagination of sexual conquest, but his only real feelings come when he visits his aged mother, whose health is failing. When his wife leaves abruptly to work in Toronto, Jean-Marc sets out to reorder things with his daughters, his social life, and at work. In a world that at best is a farce, does he stand a chance?

A Family Secret

A woman learns secrets about her family while attending the funeral of her father.

Claude Jutra: An Unfinished Story

A revealing look at the great Quebecois director who gave us such classic films as Mon Oncle Antoine, A toute prendre and Kamouraska: Power of Passion. Amidst the rise of French-Canadian identity and the political struggles of the '60s, Jutra was at the forefront of a group of artists dedicated to social change and attacking taboo.

Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema

The film consists largely of a series of interviews with female filmmakers from several different countries and filmmaking eras. Some, such as Agnès Varda and Catherine Breillat (both from France), have been making films for decades in a conscious effort to provide an alternative to the male filmmaking model; others, such as Moufida Tlatli (Tunisia) and Carine Adler (England), are relative newcomers to directing, and their approaches seem more personal and less political. The film as a whole manages to cover some important topics in the feminist debate about film -- how does one construct a female gaze, how can one film nude bodies without objectifying the actors (of either sex), what constitutes a strong female role -- while also making it clear that “women’s film” comprises as many different approaches to filmmaking as there are female filmmakers.

August 32nd on Earth

After escaping unscathed from a car accident, photo model Simone decides that having a baby is the only way to give her vacant life some meaning. She asks her best friend Philippe to get her pregnant, and he reluctantly agrees, on the condition that they conceive somewhere in a desert, so they leave Montréal on a 24-hour round-trip to Salt Lake City to find a suitable spot.

Montreal Stories

Six stories about Montreal. 1: A young housewife from Toronto samples the nightlife using basic French. 2: The tale of a painting of Montreal's first mayor, Jacques Viger. 3: During a hockey game, Madeleine tries to tell Roger she wants a divorce after forty years of marriage. 4: A visitor to a conference on pictographs arrives at the airport, where the female customs officer steals a momento from each person. 5: As she is being driven to the hospital in an ambulance after an auto accident, Sarah recalls her life. 6: At a diplomatic reception, an older woman reminisces about her grand love in Montreal.

Four Stiffs and a Trombone

An actor works as night watchman at a film studio where a musical serial killer strikes.

Love-moi

A stage director learns of his young actors' fears as they are setting up a new play.

Lessons on Life

A day in the life of a Quebec magazine writer - his fortieth birthday - from his dream before waking to his last act before sleeping. He looks back over his life, his thoughts, and his loves.

Jesus of Montreal

A group of actors putting on an interpretive Passion Play in Montreal begin to experience a meshing of their characters and their private lives as the production takes form against the growing opposition of the Catholic church.

Les Heures Précieuses

The experiences of a volunteer in a clinic for terminally ill patients.

I've Heard the Mermaids Singing

Scatterbrained Polly gets a job as a secretary in Gabrielle's art gallery. Polly aspires to be a professional photographer, and idolizes Gabrielle for her artistic ability. When Gabrielle rekindles an old romantic relationship with the younger painter Mary, Polly becomes jealous, and discovers Gabrielle isn’t exactly who she claims to be.

Les Voisins

Three couples meet at one of them for a slide show evening. But nobody takes pleasure in this evening, where triumphs the banality of the exchanges: it is a socialization forced by the bonds of the neighborhood, devoid of empathy or sincerity.

Sonia

A woman deals with her mother, an arts professor, plunging into chaos due to Alzheimer's.

The Lady of Colours

In Quebec 40s, orphans or abandoned children are placed in a gigantic psychiatric hospital where children were locked. Were they sick? No, they simply had no family. To escape this oppressive universe, they created a parallel world: the institution's basement where, in a maze of tunnels, they founded an independent company, with its rituals, spells. A young girl, Agnes, reigns over this underground world that adults seem to tolerate.

A Woman in Transit

Even though the protagonist of the Canadian Femme De L'Hotel is a female filmmaker, one would think twice before suggesting that this effort by Swiss-born director Lea Pool is autobiographical. Paule Baillargeon portrays a well-known director who returns to her home town of Montreal to film a high-budget musical drama. At her hotel, Paule has a brief but unsettling encounter with a suicidal elderly woman (Louise Marleau). This element of the plot is briefly forgotten as we get to know the actors in Paule's current project. Then she meets the old lady again, and with mounting incredulity Paule discovers that the actual events in the woman's life mirror the fictional events in the director's film.

Angel Life

Two strangers have a fateful one-night stand in Montréal.

Panique

Industrial pollution causes water poisoning and generalized sickness in a nearby city and is the start of a major news scandal.

The Late Blossom

30-year-old Quebec City native Gisèle lives a quiet life as a secretary without happiness with her parents and siblings. One day, tired of being teased by her office mates, she decides to consult a marriage agency to find her soul mate.

East End Hustle

Group of prostitutes who rely on each other to revolt against their sinister pimps. Their bid for freedom turns much more dangerous than they ever imagined.

La piastre

Robert decides to drop everything and go back to his homeland, accompanied by his daughter and a couple of friends.

Before the Time Comes

Hélène is a woman who already has, in her view, quite enough children. For some time she has secretly been taking birth control pills, but now she is too old to use them safely. When her husband Gabriel discovers the pills, he is distressed, since he wants a large family. The two of them discuss their differing attitudes and desires but come to no resolution.

Les vautours

Although he is something of a layabout, and is still living with his mother, her death comes as something of a shock to Louis Pelletier (Gilbert Sicotte). Still, he has hopes of some sort of legacy and believes that his relatives will help him find a job. All his hopes are dashed when, before the funeral, his three aunts come to Quebec City to settle their sister's estate. As grasping and efficient a crew as ever strode a parlor, by the time they leave, the estate has been cleaned to the bones, as if by vultures.

Gina

Gina is a stripper at a popular local club. Everybody loves her and wants her. One night, a feared gang enters her motel room and gang-rape her violently. Soon afterward, she asks the services of criminals to help her exact revenge on those who attacked her.

L'amour blessé

A lonely divorced woman spends her evening in her apartment listening to a phone-in radio show. As she listens to strangers talk candidly about their personal problems, she has to come to terms with her own.

Réjeanne Padovani

The unexpected return of his ex-wife and the assembly of a group of protesters both threaten to wreck a corrupt contractor's inauguration party for his new superhighway.

Et du fils

Set on an ice-encircled island in the St. Lawrence, this is a drama of passion and violence. An old man, attached to his ancestral home and traditions, is confronted by his son, an immature young man who has no time for these values. The outcome is tragic as the father refuses to let his home fall into the hands of outsiders.

Montréal blues

A group of youths open an organic restaurant.

The Great Ordinary Movie

The Ordinary Grand Film is the result of love at first sight with The Ordinary Grand Circus. With film and equipment borrowed from left and right, with the free complicity of all those who appear in the credits, they went on weekends to film a few moments of their tour.

Between You and You All

A chronicle of the lives of a couple and the gradual dissolution of their relationship.

Do It Yourself

A career guidance film about scientific research that shows the scientist as a methodical explorer of the unknown.