Curse of Aurore (2020)
(On Cable TV, November 2022) Part of being French-Canadian is an uncanny ability to be simultaneously part of American culture and outside of it—the exposition to Anglo society and entertainment is quasi-constant, but the language barrier, as permeable as it is to bilingualism, is a quick reminder that they are not like us and we are not like them, not really. We may watch the same movies, drive the same cars, build houses with the same construction material (albeit with more insulation) and eat more or less the same food until the global domination of poutine becomes obvious to everyone, but French-Canadians are not Americans and vice versa. The culture isn’t the same, the attitudes aren’t the same and there’s an added layer of French-Canadian references that Americans can’t understand. This makes American-made Curse of Aurore a very strange cultural object to contemplate, as this found-footage film follows three American filmmakers as they try to understand the famous-in-Québec criminal case of Aurore Gagnon. The film plays on a number of levels that may not be completely obvious to its own anglo filmmakers: For one thing, the 1952 movie La petite Aurore: l’enfant martyre is widely acknowledged to be the first noteworthy made-in-Québec movie—it benefited from the notoriety of the infamous child-abuse case that inspired it and further made Aurore a cause célèbre for many more generations, revived by the 2005 remake. I mention this because for American filmmakers to come to Québec and take on Aurore Gagnon is going right for one of the biggest deals in Québec culture—as clear a case of cultural appropriation as it’s possible to get. Looking at Curse of Aurore from that lens is highly instructive. Once past a weak framing device (apparently featuring a big-name paranormal YouTuber), much of the first half of the film approaches comedy, as the American protagonists shooting a quick on-location documentary can’t quite deal with the weather or the small-town culture confronting them. Not that they make things easier on themselves by acting like dumb ugly Americans (one of them a kleptomaniac stealing stuff every few minutes) and being called on their outsider status at the local convenience store. There are strange glitches, events and eerie moments, but things really get going in the last third, as they end up in pure Québec terroir folk horror, with a cult having sprung up around the demonic presence of Aurore, that cult taking deadly aim at the three Americans out of their elements (and good riddance at that). The film is made as horror but gets increasingly funnier, as rural Québec ends up being a place of unspeakable terror and human sacrifice—show this film to French-Canadians and the last half-hour is one burst of incredulous laughter after another. Some of the unintended laughter comes from the less-than-convincing acting of the locals—including a surprisingly high number of “rural Québec folks” speaking with a strange European accent rather than the expected French-Canadian joual. Not that the three actors are necessarily more believable, as YouTubers are stuck in a found-footage film… but anyway. As much as writer-director Mehran C. Torgoley doesn’t get Québec right, at least he gets it very entertainingly wrong: Curse of Aurore is an insult, but I’d love to organize a screening at a local SF convention and hear the crowd howl.