http://www.cinematheque.qc.ca/exposition/p_1/aff/P_1988_0057.jpg


Gina (Céline Lomez), a Montreal striptease dancer, is sent by heragency to small-town Louisville to give a show at a local hotel. Alsoarriving in Louisville that same day are Bob Sauvageau (ClaudeBlanchard), leader of a gang of snowmobilers known as ?Les Pinguins,?and a director (Gabriel Arcand) and a small crew of filmmakers from theOffice National du Cinéma who are making a film on the oppressiveworking conditions at the local textile factory (a reference toArcand?s own NFB-banned documentary On est au coton). The friendlyrelationship that is established between Gina and the filmmakers upsetsthe snowmobilers, while the filmmakers, having persuaded the manager ofthe factory to allow them to film, are discovering a long history ofalienation and submission among the workers.


In the evening, as Gina gives her first performance, tension growsbetween her and the snowmobilers. That night Gina is alone in her roomwhen one of the snowmobilers breaks in and rapes her. She decides toanswer violence with violence and with the help of her manager and hisfriends she attacks the snowmobilers. After gaining violentretribution, she returns to Montreal, then flies to Mexico. Meanwhile,the filmmakers have been taken off the film by their producer followingprotests by the company and end up making a police thriller.


Denys Arcand?s extraordinary fatalistic dirge on life in Quebec mightwell have been subtitled ?victimization as the inevitable condition ofsociety.? Less overtly political than Réjeanne Padovani (1973), thoughequally about powerlessness, Gina draws ironic parallels between thedocumentary and fiction modes and between various kinds of alienation,defeat and submissiveness. An incisive indictment of class divisions inQuebec society, it speaks of humanity?s shared servitude, and offers nohope of a political solution. Gina has been aptly called ?the mostunderrated of Arcand?s films? by NOW magazine film critic JohnHarkness, but also marked a turning point in Arcand?s career ? heturned away from personal fiction films for the next ten years. Thefilm?s spectacular violent denouement, which might seem reminiscent ofthe work of Sam Peckinpah, reflects Arcand?s view that violence isinevitable in a senselessly brutal society.

By Peter Morris



1975
95 min., colour, 35mm
French
Director Denys Arcand
Producer Pierre Lamy
Executive Producer Luc Lamy
Writer Denys Arcand
Cinematographer Alain Dostie
Editor Denys Arcand
Sound Serge Beauchemin
Music Michel Pagliaro, Benny Barbara, Gabriel Arcand

Principal Cast Paule Baillargeon, Serge Thériault, Frédérique Collin, Claude Blanchard, Gabriel Arcand, Céline Lomez
Production Company Les Productions Carle-Lamy Ltée



Ripped with AutoGK, using 1/6th DVDR format. The DVD didn't contain any subtitles.

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