FILMS/
THE SALESMAN
Screenings
Sun, May 1
6:15 / Kabuki
Tue, May 3
8:50 / PFA
Thu, May 5
2:00 / Kabuki
Le vendeur
New Directors
Canada,
2011,
107 min
CREDITS
- dir
-
Sébastien Pilote
- prod
-
Marc Daigle, Bernadette Payeur
- scr
-
Sébastien Pilote
- cam
-
Michel La Veaux
- editor
-
Michel Arcand
- mus
-
Pierre Lapointe, Philippe Brault
- cast
-
Gilbert Sicotte, Nathalie Cavezzal, Jérémy Tessier
- source
-
Seville Pictures, 400 De Maisonneuve Boulevard W., Suite 1120, H3A 1L4 Montreal, Canada. FAX: 514-841-8030. EMAIL: pascalel@sevillepictures.com.
At a small-town car dealership in Quebec, 67-year-old Marcel Lévesque (Gilbert Sicotte) is top salesman for the month of December, as he has been in so many months over the preceding years. His daughter, Maryse (Nathalie Cavezzali), a hairdresser and single mother, thinks it’s time he consider retirement. But Marcel relishes the work and his mastery of its small rituals and strategies, happily recording his sales pitches to “learn where he went wrong” and ordering 10,000 new business cards embossed with totemic gold foil. He’s a widower, and other than his devotion to Maryse and her hockey-playing son, Antoine (Jeremy Tessier), Marcel is his job. Meanwhile, the local paper mill has been closed for eight months and counting, possibly for good, as the whole town holds its breath; not the best circumstances for selling cars. In his remarkably assured debut feature, writer/director Sébastien Pilote and cinematographer Michel La Veaux build the film’s emotional and visual language from a quiet, natural poetry of quotidian detail: the resigned work of clearing fresh snow, the tight dimensions of Marcel’s award-covered office, the ritual ka-thunk of daily sodas from the shop’s vending machine. It’s in this sense of circumscribed routine that we feel the maximum weight of the events that unfold beyond Marcel’s control, testing not only his sense of identity but also life’s meaning at the deepest level. Sicotte is riveting in a performance that feels nothing like performance, and the film’s persuasive realism gives it the relevance of a great documentary, as crafted by a master storyteller.
—Steve Mockus
In French with subtitles. Special support for this program generously provided by Visionary Circle members Camilla and George Smith. Presented in association with California Film Institute. New Directors Prize Contender.
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