My Uncle Antoine (Mon oncle Antoine) (1971)

6,006 Movies For a Post-Covid World... (6013 items)
list by ToonHead2102

Listal's Best Christmas Movies 2012 - Result (53 items)
list by Villiana

Brrr, It’s Cold Out There! (33 items)
list by Alix

Watched in 2014 (229 items)
list by bob loblaw

New-to-Me Films of 2012 (366 items)
list by Lyzette

"Mon Oncle Antoine" is a unique film in more ways than one. In principle and although its base plot would fit within the fictional drama, the development and the way to approach it is almost next to documentary film, so beloved by the Canadian film, including her own director, the versatile Claude Jutra.

The plot of the film seems a simple story of manners set in a small town in Que... read more

Description: There was a time when the general store was the crossroads of life, a place where a boy could learn all he needed for the way ahead--especially when his uncle was the storekeeper, and also the undertaker, and the nephew often called upon to lend a hand. This film recalls such a store in a village in the asbestos mining area of Quebec in the early 1940s. The film presents a hundred-and-one vignettes of village life--all the bitter-sweet nostalgia with which a man might remember the events that thrust him into manhood. The action takes place on Christmas Eve--the one time of the year when the mine closed its doors, and the stor There was a time when the general store was the crossroads of life, a place where a boy could learn all he needed for the way ahead--especially when his uncle was the storekeeper, and also the undertaker, and the nephew often called upon to lend a hand. This film recalls such a store in a village in the asbestos mining area of Quebec in the early 1940s.

The film presents a hundred-and-one vignettes of village life--all the bitter-sweet nostalgia with which a man might remember the events that thrust him into manhood. The action takes place on Christmas Eve--the one time of the year when the mine closed its doors, and the store bustled with humanity. For a few hours the villagers could forget their poverty and converge on the store for gossip and revelry. In the midst of it all was Uncle Antoine, customary ebullience and ribald humour whetted by occasional recourse to the gin bottle, and always somewhere in the background, his nephew Jacques taking it all in. But for Jacques this night was to bring sudden initiation into some of the harsher, cruder realities of life, even acquaintance with tragedy and death.

Mon oncle Antoine is about a Quebec that makes no headlines but reflects the whole of life, the ebb and flow of hope and despair that might be in anyone's memory. In French with English subtitles.
... (more) (less)