As an independent journalist, Bob MacKenzie writes articles for a number of print and internet publications. The local and national scope of his articles for the Kingston Net Times, the Kingston Business Journal, and other publications make them of interest to readers not just in Kingston but across North America. This article is reprinted here for your information. All material included in this page is copyright © Bob MacKenzie, 1996. No reproduction for any reason is allowed without prior permission in writing from the author.

The article below was published on the internet in the Kingston Net Times.

Lilies

a film by John Greyson

based on a play by Michel Marc Bouchard

With credentials including a cast of award winning actors and 14 Genie Award nominations, John Greyson's film, Lilies, comes highly recommended. However the subject matter of the story, a love triangle between three young men which leads to two murders, may make the film difficult for some.

Greyson's treatment of this story, while visually stimulating, tends to be built up of elements which have long been standards in film and theatre. Central to his approach is the play within a play, a technique which was old even when Shakespeare used it in Hamlet. Like Hamlet, however, Lilies embraces many of the elements of classical tragedy and is well suited to the theatrical approach employed by Greyson.

The play within a play allows Greyson latitude in presenting the story which he would not have available had he employed a straight narrative technique. The film presents not the facts of the matter but the facts as recalled by the two principal players, a Bishop played by Marcel Sabourin and a convict played by Aubert Pallascio.

Being recalled in 1952, these memories of events 40 years earlier are played out in a prison chapel by fellow inmates of the convict, Simon. Sometimes the play is seen as it is performed in the chapel. At other times it is seen through the eyes of Simon and the Bishop, remembered in the locales where the events had originally occurred.

Using a technique pioneered 40 years ago in the film Laura, Greyson achieves dramatic narrative effect by changing narrative point of view about three quarters of the way through the story. As had been the case in Laura, this narrative shift allows the director to expose new facets of the story which might otherwise go unnoticed.

It is necessary and sometimes difficult to exercise Coleridge's "suspension of disbelief" when watching Lilies. Because the story is told through the role-playing of a group of male convicts, all characters, male and female alike, are played by males. This is at first disconcerting, but it is always clear that this is a play based on memories and one soon accepts the female characters. Much of the credit for this goes as well to the fine acting of all the cast, especially Brent Carver and Remy Girard, who carry off female roles while appearing decidedly unfeminine.

In this taught psychological drama, Jason Cadieux is outstanding as the young Simon beset by uncertainty and self-doubt that often seems beyond endurance. In a film that often has the look and feel of another film about an obsessed young man, Equus, Cadieux and Danny Gilmore, who plays Simon's lover Vallier, present a powerful vision of youthful angst.

The selection of lilies as the central image of the story is an inspiration. One brief scene explains that, while lilies are a thing of beauty and are the symbol of the French royalty, they are also the symbol burned into the flesh of French society's outcasts to brand them for life and are a flower often associated with death. Lilies is indeed a tale of outcasts who are unable to escape their own fate.