A touching and emotional drama about three old loners who chose to live away from civilization, somewhere deep in the forests of Quebec, was shot by the eminent Canadian Francophone filmmaker Louise Archambault. Ted (Kenneth Welsh), Charlie (Gilbert Sicotte) and Tom (Rene Girard) each for their own reasons decided to leave civilization and settle in a hut by the lake in the wild. Their only contact with the world is Steve (Eric Robidoux), a hotel manager who almost no one comes to, and he visits three uncles on a weekly basis and brings them food and other groceries and trades them for the “grass” the old people grow there.
But everything will suddenly change when the informal leader of this socialite Ted suddenly dies in his sleep, and the lives of Charlie and Tom will change further when two women appear in their lives. One is Steve’s aunt Gertrude who refused to return to the insane asylum where she had spent the last 60 years and her nephew decided to offer her refuge. Another is younger photographer Raf, Steve’s peer, who is trying to make a documentary about the famous forest fire decades ago and is trying to reach out to a few survivors like Ted. To her chagrin, Ted died even before she was able to reach him, and it all takes place at a time when a new big fire is threatening that could change all their lives again.
In fact, their lives have already been changed by the death of Ted and the arrival of Gertrude and Rafa, and in time we will understand the reasons why these people decided to take such a drastic step as escaping to the wild. We often hear that many people say that one day they will give up everything and move somewhere in the woods, but it is clear that only a few really do something like that. Bitter – sweet “Il pleuvait des oiseaux” in the original or “And the Birds Rained Down” (the fire was so strong that birds fell from the sky, someone will say while describing the famous fire more than half a century ago) was a drama about people who really decided to take such a drastic step. Closed, old guys with “intruders” seem to be starting to slowly open up and think about whether their choice was a good one and whether the escape from life and the problems they once faced was justified.
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