Nô

The apparently short, sharp title of this complex film by theatre-maker Robert Lepage accommodates the major and original contrast introduced in the story; nô stands for the English no which was used with a French accent to say non to the Quebec separatists, but nô also stands for the Japanese no theatre with which the film opens. Lepage does not suggest any link between these very different issues, but the perspective of the antique Japanese theatre in the face of the activitist political mood of the early seventies is however clarifying in a strange and alienating way. The film is set in 1970 and jumps back and forth between Osaka in Japan, where the actress Sophie is playing a role in a traditional bedroom farce by Feydeau in the Canadian pavilion at the world fair, and Montreal in Quebec, where her boyfriend Michel has three friends visiting who are involved in terrorist activities for a separatist Quebec. In order to stress the major difference, the Canadan shots are in black and white and the Japanese ones in colour. While Sophie becomes involved in Japan in situations that seem to imitate the farcical tomfoolery of Feydeau, far away from her Michel is sucked up in radical politics that get out of hand. Lepage does not try to link together the impossible; he allows the differences their own self-esteem. GjZ