Set in a small Quebec town in the late-1920′s, this emotional drama follows the life and exploits of Celeste Beaumont, a talented young pianist who gains local celebrity at the town movie theater for her gifts as a silent film pianist. Awkward Pierre Blaudell is her biggest fan and eventually marries her. Shortly after this she bears his son, Pierre, who joins the army. She insists on joining him at the base and his meddlesome, snooty parents insist she give them her son. Pierre is killed in the war, and Celeste flees to New York where she finds steady employment as a jazz pianist. She finds a life-long companion with a black musician and chronicles her experiences in a diary that she passes on to her son after he grows up. Her son becomes a painter and once his own son, Antoine, is grown, reads him the story of Celeste, the youth’s grandmother. Intrigued, Antoine heads to the Big Apple in hopes of finding her.
This movie is an emotional drama about how Antoine, played beautifully by François Méthé, discovers the details of his heritage. This film won many awards in Canada and at Cannes in 1988. François Méthé, who was about 11-years-old, never acted again after this movie.
From IMDb:
A quiet painter, separated from his wife for a year, receives a suitcase in the mail from his mother, whom he hasn’t seen since infancy. He believes she abandoned him to his wealthy, paternal grandparents. The suitcase contains mementos and a diary, a long letter to him, written over the years, with details of her youth, her first job as a pianist at a cinema, the coming of talkies, her marriage, and how he came to live with his grandparents. As he reads through the materials and her story comes to life, his son Antoine, who’s about 10 or 12, tries to break through his father’s silence and sorrow by taking matters into his own hands.
