L’Amour dans le temps de la guerre civile

A synthesis of Jean’s previous fiction works and weighty documentary oeuvre then emerged with his fiction feature L’Amour dans le temps de la guerre civile, starring up-and-comer Alexandre Landry as a drug-using mostly-gay male sex worker. As if culled from the stories in Hommes and Épopée, the film notes posit the hustlers as “neither villains nor victims, they are the very incarnation of the sick and violent society that imprisons them.”(1). For critic Éric Moreaux, the vérité feature steers away from “misérablisme” to boldly reveal “a reality from which we would rather turn away. Cinema is also there for this reason: to force us to look.” (2) L’Amour premiered at TIFF and screened in official selection at the FNC.

(1)FNC program. 2014

(2) “Le nouveau Rodrigue Jean: coeurs sensibles s’abstenir” La Presse. 9 October 2014