Richard Gere as we’ve never seen him before: the American actor plays a man at the end of his life in “Oh, Canada”, a twilight film by Paul Schrader, which is released in theaters this Wednesday in French-speaking Switzerland.
The voice-over at the beginning leaves no room for doubt: we are witnessing the last moments of a man. Moving in a wheelchair, carrying a urine bag, his eyes half-closed by illness and pain, Richard Gere sweeps away the fantasy of the 80s, dressed as Armani from “American Gigolo” (filmed by the same Schrader), as well as the sexy businessman from “Pretty Woman” (1990).
“It was a little scary to see myself getting older, to see myself as I will be in a few years. It’s a very strange thing,” he confided during the press conference in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where the film was in competition. “My father passed away a few months before Paul (Schrader) presented the project to me. He was clearly living his last days, and the way his mind was confronted with many different realities, that’s what really touched me about this scenario,” explained the actor.
More than 40 years after their first collaboration, the filmmaker haunted by redemption and the actor, now 75 years old, came together for this film in the form of a review, adapted from a novel by Russell Banks.
“Oh, Canada”, the title of a song by Neil Young, is the story of a famous documentary filmmaker, Leonard Fife, who made his reputation by exposing scandals and through his political commitment. Installed in Canada with his wife and former student played by Uma Thurman, he decides, knowing he is condemned, to lift the veil on the past cowardice and the wounds he has inflicted.
Filmed in close-up by a team who wants to know everything about his mentor, Leonard opens up, gets lost, perhaps invents… He thinks he remembers what he was like when he was young (played on screen by Jacob Elordi, seen in “Euphoria” and “Priscilla”). In this memory puzzle, the past and the present collide, the Leonard of the present remakes the film of his life, remembers the women he has been with.
The opportunity to revisit his decisive decision to leave for Canada, to avoid conscription during the Vietnam War. Paul Schrader makes his film a final confession. The man who has long been in the shadow of Martin Scorsese, as a screenwriter, had already brought to the screen a first novel by Russell Banks, “Affliction” (1997).
