Bon Cop, Bad Cop

I saw Bon Cop, Bad Cop on Friday night and I think it was really great--as entertainment, of course, not as art, obviously. It was so hilarious I couldn't stop laughing out loud the entire time, and neither could anyone else in the cinema, which was Quartier Latin (ie--I saw the French version with the English bits subtitled in French, as opposed to vice-versa).

It seemed clear to me that it was a Québécois film. I went in expecting some kind of Trudeau-esque version of bilingualism, and expecting not to like it for that reason. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the film was clearly taking the mick at English Canada's expense, and bilingualism in general, since everything Québécois always comes out on top: Patrick Huard's Québécois bad boy cop tactics win out over Colm Feore's polite English style; Huard gets Feore's sister but Feore doesn't win Huard's wife; and in the end Feore not only adopts Huard's rebel style but also learns to curse (à la Caliban peut-être?).

I really liked the "grammaire du sacre" scene. Muse described it on her blog, and I thought it would be nauseatingly bad to watch, too pedagogically serious, but the on-screen performance is quite humourous, and again seems to be taking the mick at English Canada's expense for Feore's ignorance, since it's not like we don't do the same thing when we curse in English too. Just like "calisse", "fuck" can be a noun, verb, adjective, and adverb too--and sometimes all in the same sentence.

The only thing really "Canadian" about the film was Rick Mercer in the Don Cherry role. That was a great casting choice in my opinion and a really nice touch to the film, especially the "frog" reference and the "tie" comment, which just about sums up Don Cherry vs. Québec. Nobody in the audience at Quartier Latin seemed to recognize who Rick Mercer was though, which I thought spoke volumes about the cultural divide. Given the bilingual theme, I also thought that casting Mississippi-born, Québécois star Nanette Workman as the ballet teacher was a nice touch.

The closing credits confirmed my conviction that it was a Québécois film about bilingualism, not a bilingual Canadian film. About 90% of the names scrolling across the screen were Québécois, and it turns out that the comparatively few Toronto scenes that were in the film were actually shot in Ottawa--I guess Toronto wasn't a good working environment and they needed to film the anglo scenes in a bilingual city! Plus, the music that played during the credits was an originally composed Éric Lapointe song--hard to get more Québécois than that!

It was also neat the the production company was called Park Ex pictures. Some of those bar scenes certainly had a Parc Extension feel to them.

I'm certainly not convinced that the movie is the kind of endeavour that will unite the two solitudes, as it's being touted by some, but I certainly like the idea of house full of burning pot as a strategy for breaking down cultural barriers!