J'aurai ta peau (Omertà)

Je ne penserais jamais que je mettrais ici une chanson interprétée par Bruno Pelletier, que je ne peux pas voir en peinture et, d'habitude, encore moins entendre. Mais il a joué un rôle et chanté J'aurai ta peau, durant la saison 2 d'Omertà. La dernière scène de la saison était puissante et peut-être la meilleure fin de saison de toute l'histoire de la télévision québécoise. Je ne sais pas trop si je la télécharge à cause de la scène ou de la musique, mais c'est superbement évocateur. La qualité du vidéo n'est pas vargeuse, mais c'est d'abord une expérience musicale, ne l'oublions pas.

Omertà will be back in Québec again

A few years ago, in my first year as a blogger, I blogged about Omertà, which I consider to be one of the best TV drama Québec ever made, and maybe the best contribution to Québec's crime fiction. Well, it certainly reopened the door: Quebeckers are interested about the genre. You can find more about the series in my original post (this one, in case you had skipped my first link).

Back when I blogged about it, I said I was desperate to see Omertà again. Back in 2008, there was a project of a new series in the pipeline, but nothing seemed to be done to go forward to production. Well, as those of you who read French know, my prayers have been answered. Sort of. There will be a movie, called Le projet Omertà, that is a sequel/follow up/new installment to the original series. As I mentioned in my French post, I am both excited about it and worried. I have reservations about the project, for those reasons:

1)The casting. The original series was a mix of big names (in Québec, that is) and unknown. In the movie, it is filled with Québec celebrities: Rachelle Lefevre who was in the Twilight movies, Stéphane Rousseau who is a famous stand up comic recycled actor since he played in The Barbarian Invasion, Patrick Huard who is another household name and even René Angelil, Céline Dion's husband! I mean was it really necessary? It lacks the fraîcheur and unexpected nature of the casting of the original series, which allowed us to see the characters before the names.
2)The format. Omertà was originally a TV series: the plot can be complex and unfold without being rushed, characters can be developed, even minor ones, a whole atmosphere can be created. The original series carried us from the mean streets of Montreal filled with prostitutes and junkies (often both) to the big neighborhoods where mafiosi, businessmen  and corrupted politicians met. I am not sure if a movie format can make us travel as well from one world to the other. It's possible, but it is going to be difficult.
3)The plot. It is going to involve stolen gold. Gino Favara (played by Ron Lea), the head of the mafia in season two and three, wanted to import Russian gold illegally in Canada. it is repetitive.

That said, as I am a big fan and as I have been desperate to see this world and its characters again, I will watch it. Eagerly. And to conclude this post on a positive note, I will put here the excellent atmospheric theme music of the series, written by Michel Cusson, which I found on Youtube, with many clips from the series. Enjoy:

La musique d'Omertà

Hey, on peut retrouver un peu (très peu) de la trame sonore d'Omertà ici. Pour Omertà II c'est ici. Oui, c'est court et sans les images, ce n'est pas la même chose, mais quand on peut quand même avoir une idée de l'atmosphère de la série.
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For my English readers, there is an interview with Michel Cusson here, where he talks a good deal about Omertà. So you can understand (a bit) why I am so crazy about the series.

Omertà, the Québec version

As I promised (maybe for myself mainly, as I have no idea if it will interest anybody else), here is my rewriting of the Omertà entry.Back in the early/middle 90s, Québec television was pretty grim. it was full of téléromans (our version of soaps, but in prime time), which were dominating the tv screen, and meatier tv series, which were either period pieces, going from very solid (Les Filles de Caleb) to very poor (all the Filles de Caleb's clones), either drama set around a specific job (hockey, journalism), which were usually written by Réjean Tremblay, a sports journalist part-time scriptwriter who should have stuck with his daytime job. He used to put lots of swearing and some nudity for the titillating factor.

Then in 1996 came Omertà, which broke the mould of tv fiction in Québec. There were a few police dramas at the time, but Omertà was more than a mere drama set in copland. The plot of the first series was centered about an investigation from the Sûreté nationale (the rechristened Sûreté du Québec) to bring down Giuseppe Scarfo, the godfather of the Montreal maffia. The main protagonists were Pierre Gauthier, a hardboiled, dedicated policeman, and François Pelletier, an undercover cop. To complicate matters, Gauthier had started an affair with the estranged daughter of Scarfo and Pelletier was trying to protect his ex-girlfriend Denise, a former undercover cop turned junkie and prostitute (because of a severe addiciton to heroïn), while keeping his own cover safe. Yes, there were exagerations here and there, but the show managed to stay believable by depicting with authenticity the everyday work of police forces, their report with the medias and the political world, the problems with police bureaucracy and by showing a very québécois picture of organised crime, showing. Omertà brought a lot to our tv: a non-apologetic depiction of urban violence, jazzy and atmospheric score composed by Michel Cusson, a casting mixing well-known stars and new talents, a plot that was carrying us with plausibility from the world of high finances to the mean streets of Montreal, full of junkies, prostitutes, pushers and low-life mobsters. Add to this the fact that the series was aired in the middle of a real-life gang war in Montreal, when bombs were actually blown and civilians were killed and you can understand that the backdrop of Omertà was familiar in a terrifying way. The protagonists were sometimes larger than life, but the world they were thrown in was very real.

Now, about ten years after the third ans last season, Luc Dionne is writing a sequel, but it is stuck in Development Hell because of some rights issues. I hope it gets settled and the next series can be shoot. Because it was that good.