Route 132

• Director: Louis Bélanger
• Writer: Louis Bélanger, Alexis Martin
• Cast: François Papineau, Alexis Martin, Sophie Bourgeois, Andrée Lachapelle, Gilles Renaud, Janine Sutto
• Language: French
• Theatrical Release Date: January 1, 2010
• On The Web IMDB Entry

Synopsis: Veteran director Louis Bélanger, one of Quebec’s most consistently intriguing filmmakers (best known in English Canada for "Post Mortem" and "Gas Bar Blues"), returns to the Festival with Route 132, a powerful and affecting examination of grief and rebirth. After a tragic and devastating loss, middle- aged professor Gilles runs into Bob, a childhood friend who now hustles sketchy goods for a living and sometimes commits small-time crimes. Bob and Gilles get to talking and consuming large quantities of beer. Soon enough, Bob convinces the near suicidal Gilles to head to the countryside to rob a bank. Unable to cope, Gilles agrees and embarks on a journey through rural Quebec which, perhaps inadvertently, becomes a journey through his and his family’s past.

The seminal films of Québécois cinema have generally considered the country as both real and metaphorical, but Gilles and Bob’s odyssey is far more literal than figurative. And loss and grief are common experiences. At a seniors’ home, Bob winds up in a violent dispute with an orderly who seems unconcerned that his charges are living in unsafe and humiliating conditions. There’s also a strange encounter with a group of former soldiers, who are in the midst of commemorating the suffering they’ve encountered in their travels. (Their tribute bears an eerie resemblance to the whale hunt in Pierre Perrault and Michel Brault’s classic "Pour la suite de monde.")

Bélanger both critiques and celebrates the traditional valorization of the countryside in Québécois society (and cinema) while pointing out that the old rural Quebec is now a myth, a thing of the past. The soldiers that he and Bob encounter are nothing if not global citizens. As the film proceeds, it becomes clear that Gilles and Bob’s opportunities for redemption and rebirth lie less in the past than within themselves. With Route 132, Bélanger again shows us why he’s one of Quebec’s most respected filmmakers. [Synopsis courtesy of Steve Gravestock/Toronto International Film Festival]