Gabrielle is a film I'm not going to automatically connect with as much as a film about a social outcast, a sarcastic freak or independent thinker. I have little experience with people with intellectual disabilities; truthfully, I can often understand how people can sometimes become frustrated in caring for them. Gabrielle merely stood out to me as an "I should see that" as winner of the Canadian Screen Award for Best Picture and Canada's submission for the Foreign Language Oscar. I can appreciate this is more sophisticated than the '90s drama The Other Sister. Both deal with the taboo issue of sex and people with disabilities. I have a lot of sympathy with the position of both films, and think Gabrielle articulated it well, with Mélissa Désormeaux- Poulin of Incendies fame giving it voice. The male protagonist's mother is repelled by the idea, and while she's the closest thing to the film's villain, she's not a mere strawman. Lots of people think like her. It's not beyond the realm of reasonable debate.
That said, the emphasis on music is another fail to connect with me. The fact that the film has no real ending, just a musical concert, really felt weak, along the lines of "That was a cheap TV movie." Which is a shame, because much of it was fairly well-structured leading up to this. Forty years ago, we would have considered this "one of the greatest Canadian films of all time." The fact that we're now churning out these films of better quality with a degree of regularity is a sign of progress.
That said, the emphasis on music is another fail to connect with me. The fact that the film has no real ending, just a musical concert, really felt weak, along the lines of "That was a cheap TV movie." Which is a shame, because much of it was fairly well-structured leading up to this. Forty years ago, we would have considered this "one of the greatest Canadian films of all time." The fact that we're now churning out these films of better quality with a degree of regularity is a sign of progress.