Paul Dion Movies

After their father died and their mother left them for a life in Spain with her Spanish lover, the Tanguay siblings were understandably perturbed. To protect their younger sister Isabelle (Fanny Mallette) from the truth, sisters Catherine (Marina Orsini) and Martine (Celine Bonnier) and brother Luc (Stephane Demers) told Isabelle that their mother had died. Unfortunately, twenty years later, the repercussions of this lie are all too apparent: Isabelle, now 25, has the emotional maturity of an 11-year-old, and harbors a grudge against the world and Catherine -- now a schoolteacher -- in particular. When Isabelle persuades Martine and Luc to visit her and Catherine in the Quebec village where they live, the return of the two siblings -- one an angry lesbian, the other an angst-ridden writer -- gives rise to full-fledged chaos first sparked two decades earlier. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi

The illicit love-lives of high-ranking judicial figures and the government who will do anything to uphold their stalwart images provide the basis of this French Canadian thriller. The trouble begins when high-priced hooker Gabrielle Angers is raided by the police while she and an appellate court judge are engaging in a little S&M. Both are arrested and one of the judge's colleagues is assigned to try the case. He is the ultra straight-arrow magistrate Jacques Savard. Savard is not pleased with the assignment, and when Angers hands him a damning blacklist containing the names of other prominent clients, he becomes even more upset. Those upon the list begin pressuring him to keep it under wraps. Angers and her lawyer also have a few mighty interesting video tapes of she and her powerful clientele engaging in explicit carnal encounters. She and the lawyer were planning to use the tapes to extort them. Unfortunately things go horribly awry and the lawyer is found brutally murdered. Obviously one of those upon the list is responsible for trying to undermine the case and is slowly murdering all those involved, but which man is it? ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

When handsome, magnetic and a bit of a rogue, young Steven Brown returns to his hometown on the Gaspé peninsula in Quebec in 1936 after wandering around the world a bit, his added glamor sets many a female heart pounding. However, this same town is noteworthy for its claustrophobic air of moralistic repression, and one result of his return is an outbreak of crimes of passion, including a couple of rapes. In fact, for a short time it looks like his entire town is out to destroy itself. Somehow the young man survives to tell this tale as an old man, reliving his memories through flashbacks. This sensitively crafted film is based on a novel by Anne Hébert, and all the English characters in it were recast as French-speaking. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

A rousing "he said/she said" endeavor, The Decline of the American Empire begins by separating the boys from the girls. Preparing a gourmet dinner, four male intellectuals begin trading stories of their sexual experiences. At the same time, four well-read women, all working out in a gym, exchange their own tales from the love front. The film is set in the lofty circles of academia, a world well known to Canadian director Denys Arcand. The anecdotes related herein are based on actual events in the lives of Arcand's professorial friends. There's nothing bookish, however, about the subject matter of the stories themselves, which ranges from mild philandering to S & M. The Decline of the American Empire was the winner of eight Canadian Genie awards (that's the above-the-border equivalent of the Oscar), including Best Picture. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Margot Kidder and Annie Potts star in this distaff buddy picture concerning two friends undergoing a series of misadventures in their love lives. Potts plays Bonnie Howard, the wife of Stanley (Robert Carradine), an immature child/man who irresponsibly spends most of his time racing cars and getting drunk. Bonnie also happens to be pregnant, but the father of her unborn child does not happen to be Stanley. Rather than hit Stanley in the face with that fact, she decides to leave him. As she heads for town to obtain an abortion, she runs into the foul-mouthed man-hunter Rita Harris (Margot Kidder in a blonde wig and tight pants). The two characters get involved in a number of vignettes, with the humor arising from the contrast between the streetwise Rita and the relatively innocent Bonnie. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

One of Canada's talented directors, actress Micheline Lanctot expresses an effective, engaging approach in this simple, poignant drama about Armand (Jocelyn Berube), a handyman with one problem romance after another. The quiet Armand settles into Montreal after his wife has left him and before long, he continues the momentum when an ill-considered liaison with a nubile woman ends on her insistence. Next, Armand gives his heart to a frustrated housewife, though this decision is hardly well thought out. In the meantime, a gay man who rents out a room in his apartment has unfulfilled longings directed at the unsuspecting handyman. L'Homme a Tout Faire won a Silver Medal for "Best Picture" at the 1980 San Sebastian Film Festival. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi