PLOT: In 1759 New France, a romance between a peasant healer and a heroic adventurer is set against the looming war between Britain and France.
Unintentionally, of course, Nouvelle-France is General James Wolfe's cruel last laugh from the grave.
Wolfe led the British who defeated French colonialists on the Plains of Abraham in 1759, thus creating Canada's two solitudes. Wolfe died on the field, victorious but doomed.
Now, 246 years later, he is portrayed as a blubbering buffoon by Jason Isaacs in Jean Beaudin's film Nouvelle-France, a co-production of Canada, France and Britain. It plays in French, English and a native language, with subtitles.
Wolfe's revenge is that the film itself is doomed -- by mediocrity, melodrama, and the Grande Fromage factor.
The cheese is the tearjerking story that is set so awkwardly on top of a sketchy and dubious history lesson.
It is also the rancid cheddar of the lugubrious soundtrack, which swells with the intensity of Mutiny On The Bounty whenever someone is emoting or, rarely, acting.
Finally, it is also the melting brie of the mushy song that Celine Dion wails over the closing credits (where is Gilles Vigneault when we need him?)
Yet a few individual sequences and a core of performances offer something worthwhile, on occasion. Sadly, they are buried inside an interminable Quebecois soap opera.
The good bits belong to a trio of Noemie Godin-Vigneau, David La Haye and Juliette Gosselin. It is their personal, small-scale story that is set against the historical drama.
She is a widowed peasant woman, a healer with a fiery independence. Gosselin is her daughter. La Haye is an adventurer and, by inheritance, a businessman. The love affair between Godin-Vigneau and La Haye, with the daughter's approval, sets a operatic tragedy in motion.
Their story, which might have worked just on its own, is played out while the British oust the French from New France, starting in Nova Scotia, then moving on to Quebec.
These fuzzy historical sequences are mostly men talking, with few action scenes. The historical cast includes Tom Roth, Vincent Perez and even Colm Meaney as Ben Franklin. Other known actors include Irene Jacob as the aristocratic siren who covets La Haye as a lover.
Politically, the film is caustic about the role of France as well as Britain, because France abandoned its colony. It also mocks the French colonial military, casting them as oafish villains. Government officials and businessmen are portrayed as corrupt incompetents or outright thieves.
Everything is simplistic. First Nations people are all heroic and peasants are either good or bad. On the bad side, Monique Mercure (from Beaudin's 1977 masterwork, J.A. Martin: Photographe) is part of a silly witches-coven of religious busybodies.
Special venom is reserved for the priesthood. Giving the film its most ridiculous performance, French superstar Gerard Depardieu plays a selfish priest with a secret lust.
He is an absurd character poorly realized. But we can't get rid of him. He is even part of the film's framing device: The movie is a flashback from scenes set in 1779 as he lays dying.
Just another awkward moment in a failed film: You can hear General James Wolfe cackling in the moonlight.
BOTTOM LINE: While there are occasional scenes set in high relief with strongly etched content, most of this costume drama is insufferable melodramatic hokum.
(This film is rated PG)
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