In Hamlet, the title character seeks to expose his uncle’s guilt by arranging for him to witness a theatrical performance designed to catch the conscience of the King. Shakespeare was onto something, even if it didn’t work out so well for the sad prince of Denmark. We can’t help but relate to the stories we are told, and the spell they cast can reveal naked truths. In Lilies, directed by John Greyson, this old trick is deployed to brilliant effect. It’s not a Shakespeare adaptation, but it pushes Hamlet’s scheme into deeper territory with a story adapted from the stage but perfectly suited for cinema. It’s a drama within a drama, where lies are uncovered but the truth remains slippery.
Toggling between dual timelines, the story begins with a bishop’s (Marcel Sabourin) visit to a Québéc prison in 1952. He’s there to hear a prisoner’s confession (Aubert Pallascio), but he catches on that something is awry when he discovers that he’s been locked inside the confessional booth with the mystery prisoner. Meanwhile, a tiny window in the booth is opened, allowing a view of an impromptu performance the prisoners are staging. There’s a half-naked young man, Simon (Jason Cadieux) portraying St. Sebastian, and another young actor, Vallier (Danny Gilmore), delivering lines in front of homemade scenery of flowers and trees. The stage is little more than a scattering of props against the chain link cage of the prison storage room. From his peephole in the confessional, the bishop watches as the young actors get carried away with the passion of their performances and end up kissing. The moment is interrupted by a priggish student, Bilodeau (Matthew Ferguson), who threatens to reveal the actors’ sin. We understand that we’re witnessing the inciting incident of someone’s guilt, but it isn’t clear what the connection might be between the stagey drama and the bishop’s business at the prison. It’s even initially difficult to tell what is happening in which timeline, but this is decidedly a feature, not a bug, of the script’s clever bifurcation.
Slyly, the storyline slips into another world and we’re following the young actors around in their daily life at a boarding school. They’re the same actors we saw in the prison, but their affects have aligned now with the characters they were pretending to be. The miniature drama has launched us into the past. The world is no longer a cluster of ersatz leaves pegged to a cage, it’s a verdant retreat in the countryside, 40 years earlier. Simon is a charismatic boy whose attraction to the fragile Vallier is obvious even as he seeks to deny it. What unfolds in this past timeline is a study of romantic yearning that feels marked for tragedy, not only because it’s between two men but because we also know that the story eventually leads to prison.
The tight script by Michel Marc Bouchard and Linda Gaboriau withholds enough information to keep the central mystery alive until near the end, when strands come together. In a brilliant stroke, all the characters of the past timeline are depicted by the male prisoners from the later timeline, including the female roles. It’s a conceit that gestures towards the conventions of Shakespeare-era theater, as well as an effective way to interrogate role of gender in stories of romance. The love between the two young men is depicted in layers of complexity, not just physical attraction‒although some steamy encounters remind us that all of this is being dramatized for the bishop in the confessional. Is he there to pass judgment, or is this an act of remembrance for him? That’s a question that rewards close attention to what’s really going on in both the past and the present.
Originally released in 1997, Lilies is being rereleased in theaters this year. In the lushness of Daniel Jobin’s cinematography and the languid pacing of the interleaved storylines, the film feels somewhat like the product of another era, when attention spans were longer and ambiguities could be allowed to linger. Yet the blurring of worlds and the sophisticated approach to gender roles feel very relevant to contemporary concerns. It’s not hard to imagine this film tickling the fancy of current filmmakers eager to try their hand at remaking a story about the interwoven mysteries of desire, identity and time itself‒looking at you, Christopher Nolan and Barry Jenkins. But why wait for the Hollywood adaptation when the real thing is right here? After all, the deeper message of Lilies may be that our stories possess the power to transform us, no matter who plays the leading role.
Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing
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