FABIENNE
B&W, 1964, 27m27s
Directed by Jacques Godbout
Starring Pauline Julien

GENEVIEVE
B&W, 1964, 28 min. 19 secs
Directed by Michel Brault
Starring Geneviève Bujold, Louise Marleau

BETWEEN SWEET AND SALT WATER
B&W, 1967, 85 mins. 15 secs
Directed by Michel Brault
Starring Claude Gauthier, Geneviève Bujold

WHERE ARE YOU?
Color/B&W, 1969, 95 mins. 30 secs
Directed by Gilles Groulx
Starring Jean-Claude Bernard, Claudine Monfette, Georges Dor, Danielle Jourdan,
Canadian International Pictures (Blu-ray) (US R0 HD)

After delivering one of its most essential and surprising releases with The Other French New Wave Vol. 1 in 2022, Canadian International Pictures finally followed it up four years later with a second volume containing two full features and a pair of shorts, all once again reflecting the young Québécois filmmaking scene in the 1960s. Some names from that previous disc reappear here, and once again it's a frequently snowy set of titles-- plus this time you get two appearances by future star Geneviève Bujold.

First up is the single-character drama Fabienne from 1964, a short that feels like an updated riff on Jean Cocteau's The Human Voice. Here real-life popular local singer Pauline Julien stars as the title character, who jumps through innumerable hoops over the phone to break out of the local club scene and score a role in an upcoming production by Jean-Luc Godard. (That won't be the last time you see his name here.) Jacques Godbout, who directed YUL 871 in volume one, this is really a love letter to Montreal with lots of striking location footage and a beautiful sense of a city undergoing a creative transition. Also coming in under half an hour is the same year's Geneviève, with a young Bujold teaming up for the first time with up-and-coming director Michel Brault (also a prolific cinematographer including The Great Land of Small). Here all three of the young actors are called by their real first names as Geneviève and Louise Marleau head to a winter carnival and both end up smitten with a boy, Bernard Arcand. Included as part of a teen-themed international anthology feature called La fleur de l’âge, ou Les adolescentes, it's a bittersweet little character sketch that again shows off the city at its most cinematic.

Then it's Brault and Bujold up at bat for the first of our two feature-length films here, Between Sweet and Salt Water (Entre la mer et l'eau douce), which earned a spot playing at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival. Here she plays, yep, Geneviève, a greasy spoon waitress who starts dating an aspiring folk musician, Claude (Gauthier), newly arrived in the city with hopes of making it big. After some exposure through a music contest, he starts to think he's destined for bigger and better things both professionally and romantically -- but he's in for a rude awakening. Beautifully shot and nicely understated, it's a potent portrait of the contrast between artistic dreams and the often mundane drudgery involved in making it come true. Bujold is excellent here, and the soundtrack actually makes you think you're watching the real thing, too.

Then we get to Where Are You? (Où êtes-vous donc?), made at the tail end of the '60s and by far the most challenging watch of either volume. Directed by Gilles Groulx whose The Cat in the Bag was a great entry in volume one, this is as Godardian as it gets with intertitles, subtitled sign language, a harsh computerized narrator, and fluctuations between color and black-and-white footage certainly keeping you on your toes. Anything resembling a plot here is mostly incidental; as the packaging puts it, "Coming together across an extended road trip to Montréal, Christian, Georges, and Mouffe each forge a unique path in the face of an increasingly consumerist society" in "an intoxicating formal kaleidoscope that pushes cinematic language to its limits." This isn't quite radical enough to be avant-garde but it's definitely in the vicinity as our three main characters -- Georges (Dor), Mouffe (Monfette), and Christian (Bernard) -- bouncing around Montreal through sterile bureaucratic buildings, lively public gatherings and protests, and intimate apartments where their own musical dreams threaten to be overwhelmed. The sound mix here is actually the real star, throwing music, sound effects, and often disorienting dialogue into a blender that must have taken an insane amount of effort to pull off. If you're feeling adventurous, this will likely prove to be a favorite entry.

All of the films here are presented in pristine 2K restorations from their interpositives, with clean DTS-HD MA 2.0 French mono tracks with optional English subtitles. Author and professor André Loiselle delivers a new audio commentary for Between Sweet and Salt Water, laying out an informative guide to Quebec-based cinema in the '60s, the director's background and career, the shooting locations, and much more. Then Groulx takes the spotlight for "A Certain Bitterness" (32m58s) with former Cinémathèque Québécoise director Robert Daudelin chatting about the director and Where Are You?, pointing out several political and social points that could be easily missed and explaining why Groulx passed away in relative obscurity. Finally, "Geneviève Bujold: Art = Life" (4m38s) is a 2018 film festival tribute to Michel Brault with Bujold, sort of a visual poem to the atmosphere of their work together. Also included are trailers for both of the feature films here plus all three movies in volume one, and an insert booklet (in both English and French) with an informative essay by Ralph Elawani ("Three Balloons in Search of a Way Out"), covering all of these films' context within the larger framework of local cinema, and a text interview with Godbout by Marc Lamothe about his film and writing work as well as his thoughts on Fabienne decades later.

Reviewed on July 15, 2026