Here's another of those Victorian morality tales the Quebec film industry produces to order. You've seen the farmhouse interiors in other movies. You'll recognise the town of Sorel, it's on the Montreal back-lot. The characters wear each others' costumes and utter the same rough-hewn bigotry and rustic wisdom. There's big, soaring music and they talk about The Land.
Le Survenant (The Outlander) is a creature from legend, straight out of a Scottish Border Ballad, the fairy feller who can do anything, win a farmer's hoary heart and charm the pants of all the girls. But he has his faults like anyone else and he ties one on down at the hotel once too often, until he seems to have a permanent headache. It's either the booze or the wanderlust, we're not quite sure. Anyway, it's curtains for his limping true-love as he wanders off into the mist.
There's about three hours of this (it felt like it) and they do it like masters of the craft. The dames are devoted, the men wear big hats, and a river runs through it. The last one I saw, the house burned to the ground, wiping out the old misery-guts of a husband. In this one, although his nuts must ache as the gorgeous heroine promises him anything, anything, lover-boy apologises and turns away (is he gay, or something?). It's a three-hanky job. But do they ever make a sixteen-course lunch of it. If you like to suck on a piece of hay for hours, weeping for joy or for sadness, you'll love this one.
Le Survenant (The Outlander) is a creature from legend, straight out of a Scottish Border Ballad, the fairy feller who can do anything, win a farmer's hoary heart and charm the pants of all the girls. But he has his faults like anyone else and he ties one on down at the hotel once too often, until he seems to have a permanent headache. It's either the booze or the wanderlust, we're not quite sure. Anyway, it's curtains for his limping true-love as he wanders off into the mist.
There's about three hours of this (it felt like it) and they do it like masters of the craft. The dames are devoted, the men wear big hats, and a river runs through it. The last one I saw, the house burned to the ground, wiping out the old misery-guts of a husband. In this one, although his nuts must ache as the gorgeous heroine promises him anything, anything, lover-boy apologises and turns away (is he gay, or something?). It's a three-hanky job. But do they ever make a sixteen-course lunch of it. If you like to suck on a piece of hay for hours, weeping for joy or for sadness, you'll love this one.
