Martin Drainville

(On Cable TV, June 2020) The worst thing that can happen to a satirical comedy is to be surpassed by reality, and while Louis 19 is clearly not the same class of film as Network, they do share the distinction of being markedly less funny or outlandish as when they first aired. Back in 1994, the idea that a perfect everyman would be followed 24/7 by a TV crew as they lived their lives was high-concept stuff—twenty-five years later, it smacks of the worst of reality TV or social media influencers. (If the premise sounds doubly familiar to you, it’s because Louis 19 remains one of the rare French-Canadian movies remade by Hollywood as 1999’s Edtv.) At times, you just want to hug the film’s screenwriter and say, “Oh boy, you haven’t seen anything yet.” It doesn’t help that the film is executed as a straightforward low-brow comedy, straight from formula filmmaking as it wrings out the usual complications out of its premise. Martin Drainville is a suitably good nebbish protagonist, while the rest of the film’s cast is (as if often the case with French-Canadian films) a who’s who of Montréal actors at the time: Macha Grenon has another walk-in role as a sex symbol; Benoît Brière has a remarkable supporting role as a cameraman; Dominique Michelle holds a plum comic role, and so on all the way to the cameos (Literary demigod Michel Tremblay as a TV show presenter!) Fortunately, even with the schematic three-act structure and unsurprising plot turns and post-reality TV staleness, Louis 19 is easy enough to watch, with a few smiles along the way. It still works, and we can still understand how it was the biggest-grossing Canadian film of 1994 in both official languages.