Guys Like Us

Bounced around: Louis Bergevin (Louis Champagne), Gaétan Langlois (Julien Poulin) and Marc Forest (Claude Legault) play Montreal bouncers in the television drama Minuit, le soir. CBC Photo.

After decades of complaining that they have been typecast as either domineering jerks or milquetoast weaklings, Quebec men are carving a new place for themselves on this province’s small screens.

“I didn’t use to relate to the characters on television,” says Jean-François Mercier, co-writer of the hit television series Les Bougon c'est aussi ça la vie! who has also penned episodes of 3 x rien. “The women acted like the women I knew, but the men didn’t. They were les hommes roses,” says Mercier, using a colloquialism for a man who denies his true nature to please women. “But they aren’t in fashion anymore, the balance has shifted.”

Over the last couple of years, a unique television genre has developed in Quebec: call it sensitive-guy TV — with a twist. There have been a string of shows, running on both Radio-Canada and TVA, the province’s largest private network, chronicling the inner life of the Quebec male. Unlike cop shows or traditional buddy movies, these characters are emotionally complex and confront serious issues: impotence, illiteracy, fatherhood and failure.

It wasn’t always like this. Generations of Quebec men maintain that they have been psychologically castrated by the province’s unique dramatic form, the téléroman (literally translated as “tele-novel”). Their beef is that téléromans are written for — and often by  — women; thus, the female characters tend to be emotionally vulnerable, but also strong and wise. The men, on the other hand, are usually weak, philandering or tyrannical. The target of their anger is Lise Payette. A well-known feminist and former Parti Québécois minister, Payette is a prolific téléroman writer who created one of the most popular and untrustworthy male characters in Quebec television history: Jean-Paul Belleau, the father in the 1980s téléroman Des dames de coeur. Not only did the charming and feckless Belleau fool around relentlessly, he also gave his wife a venereal disease.

Family guy: Actor Paul Guevremont became a Quebec TV icon for his portrayal of Papa Plouffe on the much-loved series The Plouffe Family. (CP Photo).

The claim that Belleau and the legion of other male losers on Quebec television could influence a generation’s feelings of self-worth would seem utterly ridiculous if television wasn’t such a powerful social force in Quebec. The top 20 shows here are all made in Quebec for a French-speaking home audience. Téléromans are viewed as popular literature and have established enduring archetypes in Quebec’s collective psyche. Everyone remembers the first téléroman dad, Théophile Plouffe, official head of The Plouffe Family (recently described in a newspaper as a meek, weak noodle), or the monosyllabic and frequently absent (but hunky) Ovila Pronovost, played by Roy Dupuis in Les filles de Caleb.

“About six years ago, there was a revolt by certain actors who said there were no roles for them in television and that TV characters didn’t reflect the experiences of Quebec men. I think what’s on TV now is a result of that,” says Danielle Aubry, a professor of literary studies at the University of Quebec at Montreal.

Much television drama in the past few years is driven by the male experience: Temps dur explored a prisoner’s struggles to go straight and maintain a connection with his wife and son; Hommes en quarantaine looked at the friendship between three men in their 40s; and La vie rêvée de Mario Jean chronicled the angst of a stand-up comic. There was even a comedy about four drag queens called Cover Girl. Some of these shows flopped, but two of the most original — Les Invincibles and Minuit, le soir — have struck a chord with Quebec audiences.

Written by Pierre-Yves Bernard and directed by one of Quebec’s hottest television directors, Daniel Grou (or Podz, as he likes to be called), the remarkable Minuit, le soir follows the lives of Louis, Gaétan and Marc, three bouncers in a downtown Montreal bar. The script is tight and the images are exquisite, if sometimes harsh and difficult to watch, particularly when the show explores the chronic loneliness of its characters.

Louis’s girlfriend left him because he was only able to achieve an erection if he was dressed up as a superhero or a firefighter; his loneliness is expressed in a powerful scene where he sits alone in a Batman costume, watching porn and masturbating. Nearing 60, Gaétan attempts to temper the volatile personalities of his two younger friends, but is hobbled by his own solitude, and an inability to read.

Hugo Dumas, a television critic with Montreal’s French-language daily La Presse, is impressed with how Minuit, le soir portrays the inner dilemmas of these three men. “They communicate in codes that they all share,” says Dumas, who recalls a scene in which one of the characters mourns the death of a bar patron. “He tries to articulate his feelings and can only express himself monosyllabically and with facial expressions. But his friend understands,” says Dumas. The drama of Minuit, le soir is more stark than traditional téléromans because there’s not much talking, says Dumas. “In most téléromans, there are lots of ‘sharing’ scenes over coffee at the kitchen table,” says the 30-year-old journalist, laughing.

Dumas is also a fan of Les Invincibles, a comedy about four 30-ish boy-men. Conscious of looming middle age, they decide to break up with their girlfriends to lead more thrilling lives. Pierre-Antoine is a doctoral student who still lives at home with his dad; Steve wants to have more sex; Rémi is a wannabe rock star who seeks more time for his music; and Carlos works in a chicken factory and lives with a dominatrix. All four are quintessentially spoiled North Americans. They are self-centred, dissatisfied and immature. But because the show's writing is so good, they are also likable.

Not so invincible: Rémi (Rémi-Pierre Paquin) and Steve (Patrice Robitaille) play men who have trouble committing to women in the TV series Les Invincibles. (CBC Photo).

Yves Boisvert, a columnist for La Presse, made a direct link between Les Invincibles and Lise Payette’s libidinous Jean-Paul Belleau, and lumped in three characters from the recent film Horloge biologique, which follows three men freaked out about fatherhood. “These guys are the descendants of Jean-Paul Belleau,” Boisvert wrote. “They can’t stand the idea of being with one woman. They can’t commit to anyone.”

Dumas doesn’t buy his colleague’s analysis. He maintains the themes of Les Invincibles and Horloge biologique simply reflect the preoccupations of the latest crop of Quebec television and film creators, who happen to be predominantly male. “We call them the Rat Pack,” says Dumas. “They are guys in their 30s who came on the scene a few years ago, and they decided to write about what they know, to portray their reality.”

This group first burst on the scene in 2002 with the award-winning film Québec-Montréal, which explored the battle of the sexes from the male perspective. It was directed and co-written by Ricardo Trogi, who directed Horloge biologique and is currently shooting another guy series called Étoiles filantes, about a pair of bandmates who meet again 20 years later. Three of the actors from Quebec-Montréal (Patrice Robitaille, Pierre-François Legendre and François Létourneau) also star in Les Invincibles. Letourneau penned Les Invincibles; Robitaille helped write Horloge Biologique and Quebec-Montréal.

Dumas believes that the Rat Pack’s perspective is in vogue right now because broadcasters, increasingly aware that viewers are turning to specialty channels and the internet, are attempting to break into new markets. “Advertisers want to attract those guys. So the broadcasters need series that are oriented for them. They don’t tend to watch téléromans,” he says.

But Roger de La Garde, a professor of communication studies at the University of Laval in Quebec City, doesn’t think these new shows are attracting men. “I would guess that it’s mainly women watching those new series. The drama might not be taking place around the kitchen table, but the characters are emotional. They aren’t action shows. Most of the drama stems from the conflict between humans.”

That sounds very familiar. Perhaps the artistic tradition of the téléroman is not dead yet. It certainly appears to have made an indelible mark — even on those breaking away from it.

Patricia Bailey is a writer and broadcaster based in Montreal.

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