Mon Oncle Antoine - Criterion Collection (1971)

Best film from Canada

Quebec cinema has usually run circles around Anglo-Canadian productions, and this is the cream of the crop. Ageless! September 29, 2008

Magique !

Un film totalement magique, pour apprendre à aimer un peu plus la France des Amériques ! August 16, 2008

Canada's Favorite Uncle Antoine.

"There is one terrible thing in this world, and that is that everyone has their reasons"--Jean Renoir.

If ever a film deserved the Criterion treatment, it is this one. Québéc director Claude Jutra's Mon oncle Antoine is not only considered his masterwork, but most critics consider it to be the greatest Canadian film ever. Before making Mon oncle Antoine in 1971, Jutra worked with both François Truffaut and Jean Rouch, whose influences along with Renoir's are evident in this sensitive film. Mon oncle Antoine is a subtle film about profound self-discovery, and as a director Juras has the rare gift of drawing us into that discovery. Set in the rural, Quebec mining town of Black Lake City before the Asbestos Strike of the late 1940s (which resulted in the ministries of Education and Health), the film tells the coming-of-age story of 15-year-old Benoit Poulon (Jacques Gagnon), who simultaneously experiences the love of a young girl, Carmen (Lyne Champagne), and the death of an older brother, after his father (Lionel Villeneuve) quits his job at the asbestos mine, and then abandons his wife (Hélène Loiselle) and five children at Christmas. Young Benoit lives with his aunt Cecile (Olivette Thibault) and uncle Antoine (Jean Duceppe) at the town general store. Uncle Antoine serves as everything from the town notary to the town undertaker. The superb film truly deserves all of the acclaim it has received. In many ways, with its emotional depth, it reminds me of another superb Quebecois film, Jean-Claude Lauzon's Leolo. Unfortunately, Jutra's career as a filmmaker was cut short. After completing Mon oncle Antoine, he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's, which prompted him to drown himself (at age 56) in the St. Lawrence River.

The double-disc Criterion edition of Mon oncle Antoine offers an impressive number of extras, including a newly restored high-definition digital transfer supervised by director of photography Michel Brault; "Mon oncle Antoine," a 2007 documentary tracing the making and history of the film; "Claude Jutra: An Unfinished Story," a 2002 documentary by Paule Baillargeon, featuring interviews with Brault, director Bernardo Bertolucci, and actors Geneviève Bujold and Saul Rubinek; "A Chairy Tale," a 1957 experimental short codirected by Jutra and Norman McLaren; the theatrical trailer; and an essay by film scholar André Loiselle.

G. Merritt May 6, 2008

ONE OF OUR FEW TRUE CLASSICS

MON ONCLE ANTOINE is about rural life and the coming of age of a teenage boy whose uncle is an embalmer.Slow moving but immensely rewarding;one can feel the director's tenderness for his characters.The film can be hard to appreciate if you don't speak FRENCH or don't know much about the aspects of rural life in QUEBEC and it's mentality..JUTRA the director, plays a little part in the general store.JEAN DUCEPPE who plays ANTOINE was a very well known actor in QUEBEC;he formed his own theater company in 1973 ... Along the way,the teenage boy also makes his sexual awakening in a funny voyeurism scene in which some women comes to the general store to renew their wardrobes.The film remains the director's most acclaim work.JUTRA sadly died of the ALZHEIMER disease in 1986. September 29, 2002

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