It was a Sunday night, on the front end of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), at the after-party for Xavier Dolan’s Cannes Grand Prix-winning Juste la fin du monde. Dolan had drifted in and was holding court at the bar. But it was another Quebec filmmaker with whom an old friend and I ended up absorbed in conversation until the wee hours.
Anne Émond slipped in almost unnoticed, and after initial niceties were exchanged, she stuck around. So did we — three Quebecers shooting the breeze, en français, staying out past curfew for no reason other than that the company was good, the bar was open and fun was being had.
It’s no small thing, in the midst of the industry-summoning schmooze-fest that is TIFF, for a filmmaker to be able to hang — to maintain a conversation for more than five minutes, to not be looking around for more important people to talk to, to simply be in the moment.
Émond will need every bit of that composure following the release on Friday, Jan. 20 of her third feature, Nelly. The artful biopic of late Quebec prostitute-turned-bestselling author Nelly Arcan (real name: Isabelle Fortier), who committed suicide in 2009 at the age of 36, could well propel Émond’s career from the relative anonymity of the art-house circuit to the province’s pop-culture mainstream.
With its unflinching, tell-all tales based on her life as a sex worker, Arcan’s 2001 novel Putain (Whore) made her a household name, both here and in France. But the author’s inability to match that feat with her subsequent novels combined with drug addiction, crippling self-doubt and the relentless glare of the spotlight for an ultimately lethal combination.
“It’s pretty hard to make a light film (about Arcan),” Émond, 34, told me in an interview earlier that day at TIFF. “I wanted to make a movie about her and her writings. I’ve read her books many, many, many times. I know them by heart now. I remember once I was looking through them for funny sentences. I was thinking, ‘OK, at this point the film needs to breathe.’ It was impossible to find a happy sentence. It’s not funny (material). She’s a dark character. She had great moments — great love, great success — but it was a tough life.”
Mylène Mackay transforms herself to portray multiple incarnations of Nelly Arcan. “I feel most comfortable in front of a camera,” she says, “like I can go further playing a character than in my life.”
Émond is not one to shy away from difficult topics. Her 2011 debut feature Nuit #1 explored the existential angst of a young man and woman over the course of an unusually verbose one-night stand. Her 2015 followup Les êtres chers mined the writer-director’s personal history for inspiration to explore the legacy of suicide over the course of three generations of a rural Quebec family.
“My films are always about people trying to live, and finding it very difficult,” she admitted, “people trying to find their happy place and not being able to. I’m interested in complex people. Maybe I’m a bit of a dark person. Yes, you choose your next film, but sometimes it comes to you and you have no choice.”
It was producer Nicole Robert who suggested that Émond consider making a film on Arcan. Once the seed was planted, there was no turning back. Initially Émond penned a straightforward, chronological drama, inspired by important events in Arcan’s life. After a year, she had 102 pages no one had seen, which she then ripped up and completely rewrote, in decidedly more impressionistic fashion.
Nelly, the film, approaches its subject from many angles, focusing on five sides of Arcan — the prostitute, the junkie, the author and the star, along with flashbacks to her youth.
Yes, there is sex, and it is approached head-on.
“I was not afraid to show a lot of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll,” Émond said. “She didn’t live a boring life.
“I could have made a film with no sex at all, no nudity, but this woman’s first novel was titled Putain; the second one was Folle (Hysteric, 2004). I didn’t want to be sensationalistic, but I didn’t want to make a film for old religious people. I’m not afraid of sex and showing sex, and it can be fun to shoot these kinds of scenes.
“It’s part of her character, but I don’t think it’s sexy. You see sex in the film, but you’re not supposed to be turned on. It’s not that kind of sexy. It always turns out badly.”
Nelly Arcan signs copies of her bestselling novel Putain at Montreal’s Salon du livre in 2002. Arcan committed suicide in 2009.
Throwing herself into the role of Arcan, in all her contradictions, is relative newcomer Mylène Mackay. Her mesmerizing performance is of the type that wins awards and catapults careers to the stratosphere.
The actress transforms herself dramatically, from body language to look to speech patterns, for each Arcan incarnation. And though she claims to be an introvert, you would never guess it the way she powers through scenes of nudity, provocative sexuality and general excess.
“I saw it as a huge playground,” said Mackay, named one of TIFF’s Rising Stars at the 2016 festival. “I was very stressed before the shoot, wondering if I was going to be able to do it all — change my body, my voice, my hair and be someone else every week. But it was so hard it became easy.
“I had to let go, be in the moment and take it one scene at a time. I knew it would go deep, but when I act I don’t have barriers. I feel most comfortable in front of a camera, like I can go further playing a character than in my life. I also saw it as a mission, which gave me the energy to go as far as I could.”
Arcan’s writing has special meaning for Mackay, 29. Coming out of the National Theatre School, she and her friend Marie-Pier Labrecque founded their own feminist theatre company, Bye Bye Princesse. The two were avid fans of Arcan’s novels, using them as inspiration for their productions.
“Before I even knew there would be a movie about Nelly Arcan, I read all her books to prepare for those shows, as research,” Mackay said. “And I was working with Manon Oligny, a choreographer who was a good friend of Nelly, so I felt very close to her. … When I heard about the movie, I said, ‘I want (that role).’ ”
Mylène Mackay delivers a towering performance as four distinct incarnations of Nelly Arcan in the biopic Nelly.
Arcan’s stance on women’s issues, and the critique of gender roles running through her work, made her more than just a frank-talking sex object, according to Mackay.
“I’m very proud of the film,” she said. “There’s a feminist mission in the movie. It talks about the beauty obsession, the culture of youth, the tyranny of the gaze of others, and the male gaze. Those are subjects we don’t talk about that much in films.”
Émond voiced a similarly profound connection to Arcan’s writing when I caught up with her and Mackay this month. She cited parallels to themes she has been exploring in her own work.
“She talks about being a woman, in chilling fashion,” Émond said. “I touched on it a bit in Nuit #1 — what is sexuality, for a woman? How can we assume our desires, while being respected? Nelly broaches these topics in such lucid, cynical ways.
“My film isn’t seeking to titillate people. There’s something more cerebral and distant going on. I’m not trying to make the audience cry at the end. I was looking to stimulate people intellectually. I think Nelly was, too.”
AT A GLANCE
Nelly opens in Montreal cinemas on Friday, Jan. 20.
tdunlevy@postmedia.com
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