Une vie qui commence

I watched this in French with subtitles. It is a story of a happy family with three children. The father, a doctor, gets caught stealing antacids from the pharmacy. He is disbarred. He kills himself with a drug overdose. The family is left with very little money. The oldest boy is very attached to his dad, and acts out in a number of bizarre ways, getting deeper and deeper into trouble. Nobody seems to notice what the problem is. The mom tries extremely hard to hold things together, but things keep falling apart, worse and worse.

In general, everyone is quite restrained. You have to look in their eyes to figure out what they are thinking. Except for trying to kill his mom's suitor with golf club, the boy is not malicious. There is a strange logic to his actions.

The movie pulls compassion out of you for all the characters, without using any of the trite Hollywood tricks. It is a hard movie to watch.

Julie leBreton is an astounding actress. It is like it is happening for real to her, whatever the situation. She is completely believable.

My wife and I saw this film at a test showing when it was shown to people in order to obtain their opinion. This movie takes place during the early '60s and the reconstitution is excellent and the same with the musical score and songs. At the beginning of the movie you question yourself as to where this story is going and what it will be all about but soon enough you get the idea and get caught in the captivating story. Young Charles-Antoine Perreault is amazing in the role of "Etienne" and sometimes, even the story is a drama, he is even funny in his actions. Francois Papineau as the doctor father is also excellent. Julie LeBreton as the mother is very convincing. Raymond Cloutier and Rita Lafontaine as father and mother of Francois Papineau are quite natural and depict very well the mentality of the early '60s. All of the other comedians are also very convincing. All in all we loved this movie and would recommend it to people over 35 years of age because of the subject matter which might not be appealing to people younger.