Voyage to Grand Tartarie
With fifteen films made over more than forty years, Micheline Lanctôt is an essential figure in Quebec cinema. From L’homme à tout faire to Autrui, from Sonatine (Silver Lion, 1984) to Une manière de vivre, this conviction-driven filmmaker, known for her precise writing, has often borne witness to her times, always one step ahead. It's high time we revisit her films on the big screen to fully appreciate their impact. Key films from her acting career round out the program.
A man, deeply saddened by the death of his wife, decides to take a trip. He encounters a woman from Quebec who is just as tormented. They come to terms with their wounds, and together they recover a certain zest for life. Micheline Lanctôt, in one of her greatest roles, is moving, funny and surprising.
Jean-Charles Tacchella
Jean-Charles Tacchella was a French screenwriter and filmmaker. In 1948, he established Objectif 49 with various filmmakers, an avant-garde film club that became the birthplace of the French New Wave. Tacchella then began working anonymously on screenplays and ventured into the emerging world of television, where he imagined the first show involving audiences. From 1955 to 1962, he wrote around twenty sceenplays, including a couple with Gérard Oury, such as Le crime ne paie pas and the initial version of La grande vadrouille. He directed his first film, a short titled Les derniers hivers, in 1969, followed by his first feature film, Voyage en Grande Tartarie (1974), starring Jean-Luc Bideau and Micheline Lanctôt. Tacchella then directed his second film, Cousin, Cousine, a bittersweet comedy starring Victor Lanoux, Marie-Christine Barrault, and Marie-France Pisier. The film was a significant success in France and captivated the American public in spectacular fashion. It garnered three Academy Award nominations and was remade in 1989. While his subsequent films were in a similar vein to Cousin, Cousine, they didn’t achieve the same level of success. Tacchella continued to make films until the new millennium, before serving as President of the Cinémathèque française for several years.
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