Recently, a DVD made its way into my hands. It was a copy of a film called Missing Victor Pellerin by Quebec-born filmmaker Sophie Deraspe. This much I know is true. From there, however, the line between what’s real and what’s not gets a little blurry.
The website for the film claims: “Alternating between documentary and cinema verité, Missing Victor Pellerin takes a close look at this charismatic character, exploring the contradictory points of view of those who knew him.” This part I got. From the moment I pressed play I was at the mercy of the camera, and the characters. It’s important that I confess I went into watching this film completely blind. I did not look at the website, nor did I read reviews or synopses, before viewing the film. At first glance, this is just what the website claims—a film, made in documentary style, about a bewildering character named Victor Pellerin. Not knowing any better, I let down my guard, and took in everything as it was handed to me. Silly me. I had the opportunity to speak with Sophie Deraspe, and she was kind enough to fill me in on the ideas behind the film, and how it came about.
After owning up to my somewhat naïve reception, Sophie explained, “as you may have realized it’s all about what’s true and what’s not.” She continues, “so this is what the film is all about—outside of being a film about a guy who disappears and burns his entire work, and a girl who has a bad love story, and another one who lost money.” Perhaps now is a good time to relate a bit about the man in question. Victor Pellerin was steadily gaining success in the 1980s art world, and was especially favoured in the Montreal art scene. Then, in 1990, he gathered every last piece of his work, persuading galleries and investors to comply by telling them he was compiling a catalogue. There was no catalogue. On January 27, the artist burned it all; a few days later, he disappeared.
Wasn’t that great? Didn’t it make your skin tingle a bit? It’s not even my own story and I feel great any time I tell it. Sophie concedes that this was part of her overall intent. “A main issue of the film, is Victor Pellerin being a character who builds up his own life, his own biography, he invents a name and a story of his life that he may change whenever he feels like it.” She continues on the topic of construction, saying, “all of the people involved will tell you a different story of Victor Pellerin because they all have their own interpretation. And what they went through is different, one from the other, and so, the art world, or whatever other world, could be seen as a fake, as those sorts of constructions of sometimes one person, sometimes many people.”
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The objective, then, seems to have been to incite participation from viewers. Sure, you can just sit back and enjoy the story, but more often than not, you won’t be able to help yourself from trying to mentally sift through things said, and things done. “I think it’s interesting, for me, and I guess for the viewers also, to question your own perception of what is true and what’s not,” Sophie says. “And actually, that’s what I aimed at by doing this film. And I like the fact that some people may think it’s true. . .I think Victor Pellerin is the kind of guy that is amazing because he dared to do all he did, and at the same time he’s. . .” she hesitates, searching for the right word, “. . .well, evil, or. . .but at the same time we admire his liberty.” Sophie explains more about the characters’ conflicting opinions, and their struggle to find truth, then offers: “But actually, in the end, it doesn’t make a difference, because we all want a dream, we all want to hear stories, we all want to believe. As viewers, we want a good story.” |
A little later in the interview, Sophie taps into a similar train of thought. “We are in an era where we like to have stars. We like to see some people really succeed in what they are doing, either actors or artists or businessmen or models, we like to have those images of people who really succeed and are rich and powerful, and we do the same in the art world.” After a brief pause, she continues, “I say ‘we’, but at the same time I feel it’s a problem too. It’s really hard to get distribution for a film that has no stars, no big names, and the thing with art is, certain people say, here is the good artist of the 80s, the 90s, and then he is almost the only one, or a few around him, and that’s it. It’s a bit weird in a way, but that’s how we are, that’s how the world is these days.”
One of the reasons Missing Victor Pellerin works so well is because it indulges these wants. As viewers, we allow ourselves to be pulled in—like the filmmaker said, we want to believe. But it was never simply a matter of giving people what they wanted; nor was it simply a matter of coming up with an idea, shooting a film, and editing whatever footage they ended up with. Officially released in November, 2006, Missing Victor Pellerin has been on Sophie Deraspe’s mind for nearly seven years.
“The idea behind it,” she says, “is that, just like whoever may say things about Victor Pellerin, or the art world, the film industry is the same too. Yes, you have talented persons, but at the same time it’s all a construction of who’s going to get the grant, who’s going to do the next film.” There are many levels to this film, and different messages reside on each of those levels. It’s enough to make your head spin, but in a delightful, thought-provoking sort of way. One presence in the film that Sophie leaves untouched is that of the art itself. “At the same time,” she says, “I really appreciate art and artists, and I wanted to show great work by artists that I really like, like Sylvain Bouthillette or Mathieu Beauséjour, and others that I involved in the exhibition, even if they’re not in the film, like Tom Dean.”
Two other artists worth mentioning are Nathalie Bujold and Zoran Music. Bujold appears in the film, and although she does not shed any light on the whereabouts of Victor Pellerin, we do get to see her at work, creating a flip book titled Vingt-sept Secondes. Music does not appear in the film in person, but we are introduced to him through his works titled We Are Not the Last. Sophie recalls a side of this group of individuals that often remains unseen: “actually, what I really liked about those people from the art world is that they can laugh about themselves and they don’t take themselves too seriously—not all of them, but at least the ones that were involved in the film, like Olga Korper. She likes to think of herself as the queen, and she does real business, she’s a real art dealer, one of the biggest in Canada, but at the same time, she can have a second thought about it all.”
In fact, humility, and the willingness to take risks, are largely to thank for the final product. “I think [the people involved] got into it more than I could imagine, and the film worked because they really wanted it to work, and they accepted a lot of things. It’s amazing. It was a big risk, and it’s amazing how they got involved with it and things happened because those people wanted it to happen. I’m really glad it worked, because as I said, it was a big risk.” Sophie is clearly appreciative for her team’s dedication to the project. Her expression of gratitude did not stop at “thank yous”, however.
“Because I asked those people to get involved in this, and put themselves in a risky situation, I felt I had to do the same,” she explains. “I felt I had to show, not only my best side. Being, just like them, being filmed without exactly knowing what will happen, and also, not being seen as somebody who knows a lot about art, but somebody who can say stupid things too, like when Sylvain Bouthillett is painting the door of the studio.” I loved that she brought up this point in the film. It’s just a little thing—the artist is painting something laid across a workbench, and Sophie asks from behind the camera, “Is that for the show?”, only to find out that the studio door simply needed a fresh coat of paint—but it’s a true “documentary” moment, raw and candid—and, well, funny.
“And at first I didn’t know I would be part of the film, when I started writing it. And then one of my readers asked me whose point of view is it? Is it Eudore’s point of view? Is it [Pellerin’s] ex-lover’s point of view—this entire film, whose point of view is it? We kind of realized it was the point of view of the camera, my point of view. So it’s through my point of view that the viewer gets an idea of who is Victor Pellerin, and so it became a must that I should be involved in the film, and in a way, as I said, when I was asking those people to just dive in and take the risk, I felt that I had to do the same.”
All this talk of risks makes things sound oh so very dangerous, but Sophie concedes that it was also pretty fun. “I didn’t ask [those involved] to lie or to act in a specific way, but some of them really liked the idea of having this part of their life invented. It’s kind of fun,” she continues, “for me it was fun too. I know Victor Pellerin so well, I know everything about his life, biography, family, you know, it was really fun to do and actually, I think that’s why people got into it so well, because it’s fun. It’s fun to invent a part of your own life.”
When thinking about this film, it’s difficult to get away from the desire to find out, to uncover, and to pin everything down. But once you figure out how to tame that instinct, you’ll start to see truly how much more Deraspe is offering; you will see beyond the guise of this being solely a film about an eccentric artist. When you’re feeling especially confused, just go back to the idea of art, because, in a way, that is the one area in which we don’t have to worry about true and false. “What Eric Devlin says is something I agree with in a sense,” Sophie says, “because good art, what is good art is not the same for me as it might be for you or for Olga Korper or another person. But there is something about creation that is important, and some artists have a different view, a different perspective on life, and it’s great that we can access that.” She goes back to the idea of construction, and offers an insight into how the act of creating defies the rule. “Whether an artist is well known, lives well or not, that is not the question—all of this might be the result of a construction of the art world. But I think creation is important. Nothing is perfect, and we might question it, but at the end, what I think, is that creation is something essential.”
I found myself retelling the story to a friend the other day. When I was finished, we both kind of sat back in amazement, and I said, “I know, it’s like something out of a movie, isn’t it?” Looking back on that, I can’t help but feel a bit silly again; well, yes—because it is a movie. But just as the filmmaker appreciates an ability to laugh at yourself, perhaps she’d allow the same from the audience. One thing my experience has opened my eyes to, is the fact that when we go into something with preconceived notions, it often hinders us from seeing things for what they are. I went into watching Missing Victor Pellerin under the assumption that it was a documentary, through and through (and on top of that was my presumption that all documentaries contain only 100% truth).
I was candid with Sophie about my own viewing of her film, and she responded, “I find it interesting that you might have a different perspective than what I wanted to do, because in a way, that’s what I wanted to do, too. I wanted to encourage different perspectives on the film, on how it was done, or how people are involved in it.” There is so much in this film, and as many ways to digest it as there are people who will watch it. In a way, it’s like a crystal ball of sorts—magical, and yet it holds an important lesson. “I think it’s about being vigilant, just questioning what you see,” Deraspe says. “Not only about art, about everything, everything being a construction.”
www.recherchervictorpellerin.com
Rechercher Victor Pellerin/Missing Victor Pellerin is distributed by Montreal-based independent film production, distribution, and sales company, Atopia.
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