Thanks for Everything

After 'Gabrielle', and in the same year as 'And the Birds Rained Down', Quebec's Louise Archambault turned to comedy with 'Thanks for Everything', written by Isabelle Langlois, a name well known to Quebec television. What came out is a comedy drama shaped like a road movie, and Montreal got it on Christmas Day 2019.

Marianne and Christine Cyr are sisters who haven't spoken in a long time. One holds a ruined Christmas Eve against the other, who in turn never forgave her for skipping the launch of her album. Their father's sudden death, in a motel room, forces them into the same room. And inside the bungalow Jean-Paul left behind, two things turn up that neither expected: an envelope of photographs taken with a telephoto lens and a wad of cash stashed in the freezer.

Both women are at their lowest. Marianne runs a popular blog and has just been thrown out of her house after her husband found out about her fling with a much younger waiter; Christine sings to nobody in particular and is nursing a fresh break-up. So they take the road to the Magdalen Islands to scatter their father's ashes and put some distance between themselves and their lives, not counting on two men setting off after them, one for the money and one to win Marianne back.

The film rests on Julie Perreault as Marianne and Magalie Lépine-Blondeau as Christine, with Robin Aubert as the neighbour keeping watch, Gilbert Sicotte as the father, Aliocha Schneider and Patrick Hivon. Lépine-Blondeau sings a song written for her by Ariane Moffatt, and the camerawork is by Yves Bélanger, who shot 'Dallas Buyers Club' and 'Brooklyn'.

The shoot ran from 18 February to 29 March 2019, moving between Montreal, the Magdalen Islands, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Panama. In Quebec it worked: it topped the holiday box office and passed a million Canadian dollars in two weeks, even though local critics stayed lukewarm. Robin Aubert picked up an Iris nomination for best supporting actor, and the film never got a British release.

• Comedy
• Drama
• Crime