(Paris) “So, why is the film subtitled?” The question came from a viewer at the end of the screening of Vampire humanist seeks consenting suicidal by Ariane Louis-Seize, presented in preview last Friday at the UGC Ciné Cité Les Halles cinema in Paris.
I smiled at this “so”, a French language tic that was not noticed 20 years ago, before realizing that the viewer was teasing us. He was a Québécois living in Paris wondering why films made in the “Beautiful Province” are subtitled in France while those coming from Senegal, for example, are not.
We speak the same language, he said in substance, wondering why The Successor by Frenchman Xavier Legrand, currently showing in France, is not subtitled even though it is also set in Quebec and stars Marc-André Grondin, without a French accent for three-quarters of the film. Why the double standard?
On stage, in front of this large crowd of about 500 spectators, Ariane Louis-Seize was visibly annoyed. This decision was not up to her, she explained, before her distributor came to her aid to justify the subtitles.
According to the distributor, the decision was not taken lightly, but some theater operators did not understand the trailer and preferred subtitles. In test screenings, French viewers could not grasp about ten phrases from the film. This was notably the case with the audience at the very French Paris International Fantastic Film Festival, where Vampire humanist seeks consenting suicidal won the award for best film in December. It was therefore decided to subtitle the entire work rather than specific scenes.
“Vampire humanist seeks consenting suicidal works thanks to its constant humor (Quebecois vocabulary necessarily plays a role here) which infuses melancholy at the most appropriate moments. And thanks to its lead actress, the fantastic Sara Montpetit, discovered in Lake Falcon by Charlotte Le Bon,” wrote the magazine Première the day before the release of Ariane Louis-Seize’s film, on Wednesday.
It turns out that in Lake Falcon, the dialogues of Quebec actors were subtitled in France, but not those of (rare) French actors. As if they were different languages. It was Sara Montpetit herself who pointed out this paradox after the Parisian preview.
The vocabulary of Vampire humanist seeks consenting suicidal, the words and expressions chosen by Ariane Louis-Seize and her co-screenwriter Christine Doyon are indeed, as Première highlights, essential to the comic effect and irresistible rhythm of this coming-of-age story very well received by French critics. The site Allociné gathered around twenty reviews, from Le Monde to Le Figaro to Libération and Télérama, for an average rating of three and a half stars.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY H264
Image taken from Vampire humanist seeks consenting suicidal
I understand that the small French distributor of this Quebec comedy, Wayna Pitch, cannot afford to alienate part of its audience because of subtitles. Furthermore, one cannot accuse the distributor of Noémie says yes to you, Plongeur of not supporting Quebec cinema. But one would like to remind French viewers that it is not necessary to understand every word of a script to grasp the essence of it.
When I watch a film featuring young people from the Parisian suburbs or elderly people from Marseille, I miss parts as well, of course. However, I wouldn’t want subtitles. Against my will, subtitles encourage me to read rather than listen. Even if I understand the language.
What struck me in the French subtitles of Vampire humanist seeks consenting suicidal is how unnecessary they are for the most part. Most dialogues are transcribed word for word. Otherwise, the language correction is nitpicked.
We forget that this comedy features Quebecois teenagers speaking a vernacular language full of loanwords and Anglicisms, not a theater troupe from Henri-IV high school reciting Racine.
When the character Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard) says he’s going to “take a chance,” the subtitles rather indicate that he’s going to “take the risk.” When he says he “missed” something, it says he “missed” it. But when he’s called a “dummy,” it’s translated as “dope” rather than “loser,” more popular among French teens.
I would be curious to know what the theater operators did not understand in the trailer of Vampire humanist. The subtitles and dialogues are identical, except for one sentence. The school principal (Micheline Bernard) asks Paul and his mother (Madeleine Péloquin): “How do I know that the next time, he won’t go after a classmate?” The subtitles translate it as: “And if next time, he goes after a classmate?” Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
What they didn’t understand, obviously, was our accent. Like Ariane Louis-Seize, when a viewer asked her if the music in her film was inspired by Strange Things pronounced with a strong Parisian accent, turning the “th” into an “s” and Things into Sings. So I thought it could have been much worse. The film could have been dubbed…
#Les #soustitres #cest #naze #Presse
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