The holiday season in a small Quebec village provides the basis for this bittersweet slice-of-life comedy, directed by Claude Jutra. Orphaned 14-year-old Benoit comes to live with a foster family in a Canadian mining village in the 1940s - his Aunt Cecile and Uncle Antoine run a general store, and Antoine also serves as the local undertaker. Their Christmas celebrations are interrupted by news of the death of a boy at a distant home, which brings Antoine and Benoit out in a sleigh with a casket to retrieve the body. But the casket and corpse are lost in an accident caused by Antoine's drinking. Screenwriter Clement Perron, who grew up in a French-Canadian village, writes from experience with a poet's delicacy and sensitivity, and director Jutra has masterfully captured the comical foibles and small and large heartbreaks of his subjects. And Gagnon gives a hauntingly realistic portrayal of an innocent discovering life's funny and tragic turns.
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