Gina

Gina (1975)

Runtime: 95 minutes

Directed by: Denys Arcand

Starring: Celine Lomez, Claude Blanchard, Frederique Collin, Serge Theriault, Gabriel Arcand

From: Several different Quebecois companies

Featuring Quebec Bob Seger.

This title is another released by a small label which is distributed by Vinegar Syndrome. On their website last year, I saw that Canadian International Pictures released a film known as Gina, which was beforehand unknown to me. I hadn’t even checked out anything from its director (Denys Arcand), not even The Barbarian Invasions. It wasn’t available for streaming anywhere and these days I’d like to test-drive the car before purchasing it, so off to <redacted> to illegally stream the restored version that’s on the Blu, albeit the English dub rather than the Quebec French version.

What a film this is: the titular Gina is a stripper sent by her bosses to the rural textile town of Louiseville (a real life location a little bit southwest of Trois-Rivieres) to entertain at a bar. Meanwhile, not only are there some documentarians that work for the Canadian government present to start filming a piece on the exploitation of the textile workers AND there’s a band of ruffians who ride around on their snowmobiles-it is winter; if it was summer, they’d clearly ride around on motorcycles-so to hear that it’s a hangout film mixed with docu-realism then it suddenly turns into actual exploitation that features a gross sexual assault (more in idea than what was shown), resulting in sweet, sweet revenge. It is odd.

At least some won’t care for the languid pacing this has in the first half especially, where we get to know the characters and among other moments, a few minutes are spent showing an entire game of billiards between Gina, one of the filmmakers and the two main heels. Yet, I was never bored waiting to see what would happen next in this snowy Quebec landscape where-get this-illegal immigrants are coming in to take those textile jobs. Nearly half a century ago. No comment.

Celine Lomez (Elaine from cult favorite The Silent Partner) was memorable as the titular Gina; the rest of the cast that I had no knowledge of was fine but Lomez was the standout as the lady who was able to be vulnerable but could also kick ass during the finale. The aforementioned revenge was rather glorious; it is capped off by “the greatest snowmobile chase ever”, as the marketing proclaimed. There aren’t too many candidates, but I’ll agree as it was all done at night with little lighting so it was impressive on a technical level, nevermind how satisfying the conclusion was. The movie will eventually be purchased on disc; it’d be nice to hear the original language rather than the dub.

As for what I was referring to at the beginning, one of the scenes at the bar featured a song that sounded awfully like Bob Seger both in vocal and music despite it being unfamiliar to me… but thanks to IMDb and YouTube I know it was not. Instead it was J’entends Frapper (“I Hear Knocking”, according to Google Translate) from Michel Pagliaro. As my knowledge of Canadian music is rather barren aside from those that found at least some success in the United States, he was a performer new to me. Attempting to learn more about that scene should be done in the future… although the same goes for exploring Bob Seger’s discography aside from the big hits and a few other tunes.