In Sebastien Pilote’s The Auction, the aging sheep farmer’s daughter Frederique (Sophie Desmarais) may be playing Cordelia on a Montreal stage but her father is an anti-Lear.
Farmer Gaby Gagnon (Gabriel Arcand), his advancing age reflected in the orange sunsets and autumn landscapes, divests himself of his modest “empire” not out of vanity, selfishness, and the desire to keep only the trappings of power, but out of a genuine devotion to his two daughters. Despite their callousness towards him and their known manipulation he gives up everything he has for them. Lear wants to keep taking. But for Gaby, “A father needs to give to be happy.”
At the end Frederique has a sense of his sacrifice but the primary beneficiary, the spoiled Marie (Lucie Laurier), remains blissfully unaware of how much her father has given up for her convenience.
The farmer’s trade in sheep gives his farming a Christian reference, which is bolstered when some black Moslems buy a sheep for a sacrifice and feast on his farm. Though Gaby seems to be living for the wide open spaces of his rolling acreage his world is constantly defined by fences and pens. That’s the extent of the good father’s freedom.
The farmer’s trade in sheep gives his farming a Christian reference, which is bolstered when some black Moslems buy a sheep for a sacrifice and feast on his farm. Though Gaby seems to be living for the wide open spaces of his rolling acreage his world is constantly defined by fences and pens. That’s the extent of the good father’s freedom.
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