Jacques and November

Jacques and November
Directed byJean Beaudry
François Bouvier
Written byJean Beaudry
François Bouvier
Produced byFrançois Bouvier
Marcel Simard[1]
StarringJean Beaudry
CinematographySerge Giguère
Edited byJean Beaudry
Music byMichel Rivard
Production
company
Les Productions du Lundi Matin
Release date
  • 26 October 1984 (1984-10-26)
Running time
72 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageFrench

Jacques and November (French: Jacques et novembre) is a 1984 Canadian drama film directed by Jean Beaudry and François Bouvier.[2] The film was selected as the Canadian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 58th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.[3]

The film stars Beaudry as Jacques Landry, a man in his early 30s who is dying of an unspecified incurable disease and documenting his thoughts on mortality in a video diary; simultaneously, his friend Denis (Pierre Rousseau) is trying to make a higher-budget documentary film about him.[4]

Critics largely analyzed the film not as focusing on death as such, but as an affirming and uplifting look at the meaning that friends and family bring to life.[5] Although Jacques Landry's terminal illness was not specified in the film, the LGBT magazine The Body Politic reviewed it as an HIV/AIDS allegory, directly comparing and contrasting its views of mortality with the contemporaneous HIV/AIDS-themed documentary film No Sad Songs.[6]

  1. ^ Turner 1987, p. 392.
  2. ^ Hal Erickson (2015). "Jacques and November". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 10 June 2015. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
  3. ^ Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
  4. ^ "Movie within movie depicts dying days". Toronto Star, May 16, 1986.
  5. ^ "Joyous ode to life in tale of dying man". Ottawa Citizen, May 30, 1986.
  6. ^ "Learning to Talk Life and Death". The Body Politic, November 1985. p. 39.