Le matou

It's really unfair to movies to vote for them after over 20 years. But I must give it a high score based on the impact it had on my life. I grew up in a French community in rural Québec within an English speaking family with a Nova Scotian mother (married to a Québecois) who hated EVERYTHING about Québecois culture, which tainted me for many years. However along came college and bigger cities with bigger cinemas and many Québecois movies on the big screen instead of on television, within a family context, this was my coming of age time.

Le matou represented a very important turning point in my life. It was my first time coming out of a movie theatre from seeing a Québecois movie saying WOW what a wonderful movie that was, uplifting, emotional, inspiring and artfully put together. It was the beginning of my love affair with Québec cinema and Québec culture in general. It was like coming alive finally at age 18, and relearning to love that which I'd been thought to despise. Often Québec cinema is best enjoyed when freeing one's head of Hollywood expectations, going in with an open heart, because that's the ultimate goal, is to reach the cinephiles' heart. This movie reaches that objective quite nicely.