By Gaëtan Vaudry
Photo: Facebook
Summer 2024 will see the release of " The Chef and the Customs Officer ", the new film by Baie-Comeau filmmaker Manon Briand. It will have been 10 years since her last work, " Liverpool ", released in 2012. In an interview with journalist Maxime Demers of the Journal de Montréal, Manon Briand explains that this is the fifth script she has worked on over the past decade and it’s the one that finally led to filming.
The new film by the director of "La Turbulences des Fluides" tells the story of a fame-seeking French chef who tries to help a child win a culinary contest. However, he must face the hostility of an entire village towards the child's mother, the uncompromising local customs officer. The lead role in this comedy was given to French actor Édouard Baer, known for his role as Astérix in "Astérix and Obélix: God Save Britannia". He is well supported by Julie Le Breton, Sylvain Girard, Normand Chouinard, Michèle Deslauriers, and Dominic Paquet: "I treated myself. I included everyone I love", notes the director in the interview.
In 2003, Manon Briand received 4 nominations at the Jutra Awards (now the Iris Awards), including Best Screenplay, for her masterpiece "La Turbulences des Fluides". A decade later, she won the Women in Film and Television Artistic Merit Award at the Vancouver festival, for her feature film "Liverpool".
Sexual Ambiguity
A graduate of Concordia University in Fine Arts, majoring in film, Manon Briand captures the pulse of her generation of trendy urban gays, lesbians, bisexuals – and even heterosexuals – for whom sexual identity is a matter of the heart, in her first work "Les Sauf-Conduits" in 1991, a short film starring Luc Picard and Patrick Goyette. With her first feature film "2 Seconds", the filmmaker presents a deftly crafted melodrama about a washed-up lesbian cyclist who thrives as a bike courier in the worn streets of Montreal. Charlotte Laurier, Dino Tavarone, Yves P. Pelletier, and Suzanne Clément star in this 1998 film.
In the early 2000s, "Heart—The Marilyn Bell Story", an English-language television biography about Toronto marathon swimmer Marilyn Bell, starring Caroline Dhavernas, allowed Briand to hone her directing skills, as well as to further explore her interest in female bodies, athletic challenges, and sexual ambiguity.
Needless to say, the free encyclopedia Wikipedia categorizes Baie-Comeau's Briand in the category "Canadian female directors whose work is marked by LGBTQ themes".