Practice Makes Perfect

A city of images

When I decided to make a film about Montreal, I wanted it to be in wintertime. I wanted a winter 

as severe as the summer of filming How to Make Love. This would enable me to look at Montreal 

as if I were seeing the city as it truly was, for the very first time. Because there is a winter in Mon-

treal. I cannot go through life experiencing Montreal as a southern city. Montreal is also a Nordic 

city. I wanted to step closer to that winter, in an effort to tame it, to feel it, because I believe it to 

be the fundamental image of Montreal and Quebec. Indeed, it was Gilles Vigneault, the great 

Quebec poet, who once said: “I created winter from a single icicle. My land is not a land. My land 

is winter.” I could not continue ignoring this country’s winter, and I wanted that winter to be as 

harsh as possible. Also, in How to Conquer America in One Night, it seemed to me that I needed 

to reconcile Montreal and Port-au-Prince, the two cities that inhabit me. I wanted the film to say 

something—as if there were no space—about the successive paths linking the two cities. I’m 

talking about the gentle space between Montreal and Port-au-Prince. Truth be told, I wanted to 

make this film for my own pleasure. I was not surprised by the city. I wanted the image to make 

me see the city from a different angle, in a different way—that’s what I wanted. Yes, absolutely. 

And I succeeded. I also wanted to include things that elude the human eye. We pass by, it’s too 

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minute. . . .  Essentially, we see a city through our emotions. In fact, these emotions are so intense 

that I believe that watching the film will enable me to see paths traveled with new eyes, to perceive 

things that initially eluded me because I hastily absorbed them as feelings and not as images.