Cultural Encounters in Québec Cinema. Identity and Otherness in Denis Chouinard's Tar Angel¹

1. This article is a revised, and updated version of Bachand (2002) [Translation by Oléna Decock. I would also like to thank Frans de Bruyn and Miléna Santoro].

Abstract

Over the course of its history, Québec cinema displayed an interest in outsiders and intercultural exchanges. The opening up to the outside world, which characterized Québec society's evolution, resulted in a renewed consciousness of its own diversity. The quest for and affirmation of the self now proceeds by a recognition that engages in dialogue with the Other—a sign of a profound maturity. Beyond the vision of an identity founded on the heritage of the majority Francophone group, there emerges a new vision with unifying aspirations founded on the necessary inclusion of other ethnic communities. This dynamic is potentially enriching, since a society cannot open itself to others, to difference, without being transformed in return. This contact, however, can also provoke feelings of suspicion and violence. In 1997, Denis Chouinard and Nicholas Wadimoff direct Clandestins, a film of astounding originality and dramatic density: six refugees originating from Maghreb, Russia and Eastern Europe, confined in a container, desperately attempt to cross the Atlantic on a cargo ship en route to Montreal's harbour. Only two children successfully reach their destination. A glimmer of hope resonates in the film's final images, which depict the children on the steamship's bow, prolonging, in a sense, the desire of their parents for a new life. But how would the country of arrival welcome these refugees? It is in attempting to answer these questions that Chouinard directs Tar Angel in 2001. This article aims to demonstrate how the latter film, which presents itself as a social drama espousing a road-movie aesthetic, is constructed through a system of opposing exotic tones that evoke the difficult fusion of heritage and newly adopted culture in this era of massive population displacement, hybridization and plural identities.

Keywords:

• Québec
• Cinema
• Identity
• Otherness
• violence
• immigration

Notes

1. This article is a revised, and updated version of Bachand (2002) [Translation by Oléna Decock. I would also like to thank Frans de Bruyn and Miléna Santoro].

2. Translations of citations originally in French are the author's.

3. For an in-depth analysis of this question see Bachand and Clément (2006).

4. Marc St-Pierre, “La diversité culturelle: un regard en quatre temps,” http://www.onf.ca/selections/marc_st-pierre/la-diversit-culturelle-un-regard-en-quatre-temps/ (accessed August 25, 2012).

5. See “Across cultures,” National Film Board of Canada, a site devoted to contributions of several ethnocultural communities in Canada. http://www3.nfb.ca/duneculturealautre/index.php?&lg=en (accessed August 25, 2012).

6. See Geneviève Mathieu (2001), and Gérard Bouchard (1999).

7. The ideological posture of the author is transparent and denunciatory. Chouinard has dedicated his film to two people from two very different statuses, although both associated with a common cause: the poet Gérald Godin, ex-minister of Cultural communities and immigration, and a young Nigerian woman, Semira Adamu, suffocated to death by police officers upon her forced deportation from Belgium in 1998. The 19-year-old woman was promised to a 65-year-old senior, already married to three women and murderer of a fourth.

8. Gilda Boffa, “The Fatality of origins in Quebec Cinema,” http://www.synoptique.ca/core/articles/boffa_fatality_origins/ (accessed August 25, 2012).