The Woman Who Drinks
La femme qui boit
dir. Bernard Émond
Canada, 2001 - 91
An old woman remembers. She revisits a drinking binge that at the age of 46, caused her to loose her son, her home, and everything she owned. The act of remembering takes her deeper and deeper into her past, right to her adolescence. Born into a working-class family, Paulette dreamed of something better. At eighteen she became the mistress of a prominent man who hid her and allowed her to lead a life of ease. But she left him for Franck, the only man she ever truly loved a shady character no-good who collected women and humiliated her; in revenge she cheats on him. Within the four walls of her comfortable apartment, she progressively withdraws into misery, alcohol, and solitude. At the end, a woman stripped of everything; she looks back on her life with lucidity and despair.
If it sounds like a cautionary tale, Émond takes care not to dwell on the moral aspects of Paulette's drinking problem. "It's a film about dignity, even if she had her binges and drank too much. She had her happy moments, although there were more sad moments, and the difference in this film is that her personality is not condemned," says the film's producer Bernadette Payeur.
A former documentarist, Montreal-born Bernard Émond has chosen a complex real-life problem as the theme for his debut fiction feature. Émond himself is less concerned with the effects of alcoholism than the motivation. "Why do people drink?" he asks. "Because life is unbearable. One way to talk about it is to make a film."
Playing Paulette, an old woman recalling all her wrong decisions in life, is the extraordinary Elise Guibault.
read more
