Élise Guilbeault is easily Québec's Catherine Deneuve, Greta Garbo, Sarah Bernhardt and Melina Mercouri all wrapped up into one magnificent woman!
A splendid thespian, one who is commendable in everything that she has ever done and who invests all of herself into every role, she has been the perfect example for an entire generation of actresses in her stomping grounds of Montréal, QC. - the likes of Isabel Richer and Sophie Lorain, themselves remarkable, have more than consciously followed in her footsteps whether it is by imitating her approach to a role or by emulating that total abandon / immersion into the role...
And so, ÉLISE QUITE SIMPLY IS EMMA; they are indissociable in the eyes of the audience - much like REGINA DUARTE was A RAINHA DA SUCATA for the Brazilian fans of the classic telenovela... or Joan Van Ark was her KNOTS LANDING counterpart, Val... In Élise Guilbeault's case, of course, her real life preference for younger men (which mirrors Emma's own ongoing tryst with a younger gent on the show) helps considerably in that...
Evidently, Emma is a soap, a telenovela, "un téléroman" - it is meant to emulate life in all of its minor little details (say, like CORONATION STREET has done so very well for so very long too) and Emma manages to constantly be all that its genre can deliver.
