Synopsis
On an island the road ends where it begins, at the wharf. The wharf is the link to the rest of the world, until winter cuts it off. But the islanders know the winter sea and its movements. They judge the ice by its colours, avoiding the open channels, fighting through the slushy fragil ice, catching their footing on the chunk ice, and running all-out across the solid ice to the North Shore.
A word from Tënk
In this short film, we witness the last hours of glory of another era's cinematographic style. The slightly outdated voice-over of narrator François Bertrand delivers Perrault's poetic commentary. We can feel it, the latter discovers with wonder and respect the unique words of the inhabitants of Île-aux-Coudres. After this film, and thanks to the advent of the synchronous sound of voice and image, he later let them speak entirely in what famously became the Île-aux-Coudres trilogy. Watch the undulating passage of these beautiful canoes as white as marsouins (did you know that the islanders are nicknamed marsousins, the french word used in the past for belugas?) designed to brave the elements, not for the futile glory of risk and achievement as we so often see today, but simply to reach the mainland, as Alexis says in the film; a true question of survival. Finally, if you pay attention to the crew members in the main boat, only one of them doesn't keep a cigarette hanging in his mouth at any point… it's Perrault himself. As he would later say of all his films: "What's important to me is that I've lived it."
Mathieu Perrault
Pierre Perrault's son
