It's Not Me, I Swear! (C'est Pas Moi, Je Le Jure!)
- Directed and written by Philippe Falardeau
- Starring Antoine L'Ecuyer
- Classification: 14A
Modest, but resonant, It's Not Me, I Swear!, is a Quebec coming-of-age story that juggles elements of dark humour, pathos and childhood whimsy. The third feature from the much-awarded director Philippe Falardeau ( The Left Side of the Fridge, Congorama) is adapted from a pair of popular decade-old novels by Bruno Hébert. While it evokes a history of similar films about troubled adolescence, from The 400 Blows to Léolo, It's Not Me, I Swear! has a light, absurd touch that allows it to pass as a comedy.
Set in suburbia in the late sixties, the film depicts a family's dysfunction caused by parents pursuing their own dreams at the expense of their children's welfare. The time period echoes two recent Quebec hits, Jean-Marc Vallée's C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005) and the Léa Pool-directed Mother Has Gone to the Hairdresser (2008). The connection to the latter film is not coincidental: Isabel Hébert, author of the novel on which that film is based, is Bruno Hébert's sister and they draw on the same family history.
It's Not Me, I Swear! follows a summer in the life of Léon (Antoine L'Écuyer), an angelic-looking 10-year-old who looks like the Home Alone-era Macaulay Culkin. Léon has a history of lying, vandalism and "deadly accidents," including a series of suicide attempts, as he tries to distract his parents from their continuous feuding.
His mother, Madeleine (Suzanne Clément), is a frustrated painter who has little talent for playing the stay-at-home mom. His father is a lawyer with a passion for human rights, but little time for the actual humans he lives with. Neither parent seems to have a clue about guiding children. When Léon tries to hang himself, his mother responds not by getting the kid psychiatric care but by cutting the offending tree down. When he tells lies, she tells him he has to learn to be a more convincing liar.
While the parent's battles lead Léon to act out, his older brother, Jérôme (Gabriel Maillé), suffers inwardly. He wants family life to be normal, as understood by the norms of late-sixties Roman Catholic Quebec culture: "You don't say divorce," he admonishes Léon. "It's a bad word, like vagina. You don't say those words."
When the boys' mother finally leaves her family to go pursue her artistic muse in Greece, Léon begins to spread his anti-social activities to the neighbourhood (the perfectly kept house of the smug neighbours is his first target). As it becomes progressively clearer that maman isn't coming back, he also begins to hatch new plans to restore his family.
He's abetted by a solemn neighbour, Léa (Catherine Faucher), who attaches herself to him because her family life is even worse than his. Both child actors, seen through the lens of adult memory, seem precociously adult in their behaviour — they talk about God, politics and mental illness — but the tone is more disquieting than cute. They're old for their years, and not in a good way.
In the third act, as the film focuses more on the children's schemes and adventures, the narrative momentum flags, but there are visual compensations. The Gatineau region backdrop offers a combination of bland housing developments and fairytale woods and meadows where Léon and Léa hatch their plans. The superb Quebec cinematographer André Turpin, who directed Un crabe dans la tête (2001), and shot Denis Villeneuve's Maelström (2000) and Un 32 août sur terre (1998), once again shows his gift for finding the beautiful in the banal, particularly in some striking overhead shots. Though the darker emotional undertow in the film is always present, the visual playfulness helps keep the story buoyant.
