After the screening of Continental: un film sans fusil, director Stéphane Lafleur took a shot at films using guns to attract audiences for all the wrong reasons.  He won?t have an issue with Contre toute espérance, because while a gun plays a major role, it is used with a definite dramatic purpose.

Contre toute espérance is a daring portrait of what globalization and corporate greed do to families.  Réjeanne Poulin has it bad enough caring for her husband, a stroke victim.  So when her call centre employer decides to restructure the company, it?s a blow the once-happy couple never recovers from.

What struck me most, was how accurately director Bernard Émond portrays corporate head-honchos.  They see things only in terms of market forces, not humanity.  At one point a telecom president says, ?If I were a woman I would be ashamed to be protected from the forces of the market.?  When Réjeanne tells the multi-millionaire she lost her house because of his cost-cutting measures, he says nothing, appears angry with her, and quickly walks away. 

Q and A with Director Bernard Émond:

Audience Member:  That was brilliantly done, and the question is, what experience or memory inspired this?

Bernard Émond:  It?s partly because of reality.  About ten years ago a thousand operators were laid off in Quebec.  This film is the second part of a trilogy about faith, hope and charity, the three main Christian virtues.  I say that even though I am not a believer myself.  It?s still very part of my catholic heritage.  It?s a meditation on current events and deeper values.  This one was about hope, even though it doesn?t seem that way.  I wanted to make a film about what makes hope more and more difficult in the world of contemporary capitalism we live in. 

AM:  The title means against all hope, why did you choose it?

BE:    Contre toute espérance is a french expression that means when something happens in a really unexpected way.  You know I had cancer and survived, contre toute espérance.

AM:  As an actress I?m fascinated by how the characters developed their inner characters, it?s fascinating to watch?  And do you consider yourself a pessimist or an optimist?

BE:  I will give the answer Rosselini once gave to that question.  I am not a pesssimist, to see evil where it is, is to be an optimist and fight evil.

AM:  I thought the film was brilliant, and you seem to take us to the maximum emotional moment with these daring shots?

BE:  I wanted the film to be very slow and deliberate.  There?s nothing I like more than looking at the human face.  The human face is like a very long and subtle text, and we have to take time to read it.  I work with my actors and my DP that way.  I think that there is a complexity in the human face that transcends whatever complexity we might try to achieve in writing.