Film Club French Season - Seducing Doctor Lewis

There is a strain of English cinema that specialises in portraying down-on-their-luck-working-class folk making good as a result of gritty determination, will power and a little bit of humour. Such films especially like resourcefulness - when said down-on-their-luck folk draw on unexpected reserves of talent and adaptability (think Brassed Off and The Full Monty). The second half of Lewes Cinema's French season and a film entitled 'La Grande Seduction' is perhaps a surprising place to find an example from such an otherwise quintessentially English tradition. In fact it’s not actually French either. A French-Canadian production, Seducing Doctor Lewis is set on a remote French speaking island off the coast of mainland Canada.

The titular 'seduction' refers to a collective bid to persuade Montreal-based Doctor Lewis to stay on the island. He is drafted in as a potential resident MD as part of a plan to qualify the island for a grant to build a plastics factory. If successful it would solve their devastating unemployment crisis. Emotional highs and lows ride on the (some have said too) naive attempts of the islanders to show themselves equal to the mainland culture. A Sundance Audience award-winner, the film has divided critics between admirers that call it 'charming' and others that dismiss it as 'patronising.’ ER