Gaby Gagnon hasn’t had more than three days off work in the past 40 years. Working his isolated hilly sheep farm totally on his own with just his dog for company and the occasional neighbor passing by, his is a very solitary and desolate life. Once a week Louis his friend and accountant stops by to keep up his quest to persuade Gaby to finally modernise the place. However in this impoverished remote area of French-speaking Canada Gaby barely makes a meager living and the farm that his father left him and his brothers, who are long gone, is mortgaged up to the hilt at the Bank.
Gaby’s wife left him some twenty years ago, and so too have his self-absorbed adult daughters who live in Montreal some six hours away and rarely keep in contact. When Marie the elder one does actually make the long drive out there one day with her two young boys in tow, it is to announce that she and her husband are separating and he is leaving her with an enormous debt. She asks Gaby for money so that she can keep the fancy house that she and the children are used too, and suggest that he goes to the Bank and put the Farm up as collateral. Although he doesn’t tell her when the Bank turns his request for a Loan down flat, as he still promises to help her out.
Gaby feels that the only way out is to literally sell everything on the Farm and the land and house too in the hope that when the Bank take what they are due, there will be enough left over to give to Marie. When his neighbor and Louis discover news of the impending Auction via the advert in the local newspaper they tell him that they horrified at the ghastly mistake he is making, but for stoic Gaby the die is cast and there is no going back.
In the days leading up the Sale, Gaby goes looking at tiny apartments in the nearby town and ends up with depressing one not much larger than a closet in a high rise besides a busy highway. It’s a far cry from his spacious house set amongst the rolling hills of his tranquil farm. The next task on his agenda to prepare for his new life is to part with his faithful old sheepdog, and its a heartbreaking scene when he takes the poor animal to be put down for just $25 ( spoiler alert …. he gets a reprieve). The last part of his plan is to go into town and seek out his ex.wife to tell he wants her back. This surprising move which comes totally out of the blue, doesn’t go down to well with her as this is the first time he has spoken to her in 20 years, and she is happily remarried.
As the Auction looms Frédérique the younger daughter suddenly appears on Gaby’s doorstep. She has been s alerted by Louis and is there to get her father to change his mind and stop him giving up everything he has ever known and devoted his entire life too. She has sussed out that he is doing this just to bail her sister out even though she knows that Marie doesn’t know or wouldn’t even care about her father’s sacrifice. But Gaby is no idiot and is more than aware that he has raised two rather spoilt girls (he’s been paying Frédérique’s rent too), ‘Fathers need to give to be happy’ he explains to a baffled Frédérique, ‘we’re like that.’ It’s a very melancholic tale with its layer of sadness that is imbued with a soulful strumming steel guitar soundtrack. With this glorious setting it is beautiful to look at, but just very sad to watch.
★★★★★★★
Labels: 2013, drama, French Canadian
