Animated Feature Wins One Genie Award: Best Picture

The Genie Awards’ top pick, Sylvain Chomet’s The Triplets of Belleville is one more example of Quebec’s vibrant film industry, which dominated this year’s “Canadian Oscars.” In all fairness: The animated feature is actually a French-Canadian co-production.

Jacques Tati-inspired animated feature The Triplets of Belleville tops the Genie Awards’ Best Film category – and nothing else

Inspired by Jacques Tati’s nearly dialogue-free (live-action) classics like Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday and Mon Oncle, Sylvain Chomet’s French-Canadian (as in, France | Canada) co-production The Triplets of Belleville / Les triplettes de Belleville was the winner of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television’s 2005 Best Film Genie Award, announced at the Andrea Martin-hosted ceremony held on March 1 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. (See further below the list of this year’s Genie winners and nominees.)

Curiously, The Triplets of Belleville – about the attempts of a loving grandmother and her tenacious dog to rescue her grandson, kidnapped during the Tour de France – won the Best Film Genie and nothing else. But then again, Chomet’s adventure/comedy mix had been nominated in only one other category: Best Original Score (Benoît Charest).

Last year, The Triplets of Belleville was shortlisted for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, but lost to Andrew Stanton’s Finding Nemo.

Genie Awards’ Best Film competition + acting winners Pascale Bussières & Roy Dupuis

Besides The Triplets of Belleville, the Genie Awards’ Best Film contenders were the following:

• István Szabó’s British-Canadian-American-Hungarian period comedy Being Julia, based on W. Somerset Maugham’s 1937 novel Theatre, and starring Annette Bening as a temperamental London actress reminiscent of Bette Davis’ Margo Channing in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1950 Best Picture Oscar winner All About Eve.
• Double Genie nominee Denise Filiatrault’s Bittersweet Memories / Ma vie en cinémascope, starring Best Actress winner Pascale Bussières as troubled Quebec singer Alys Robi, who – like Best Actress Oscar nominee Jessica Lange as Frances Farmer in Frances – spent years in a mental asylum.
• Best Director winner Francis Leclerc’s Looking for Alexander / Mémoires affectives, starring Best Actor Roy Dupuis as a man who, after waking from a coma, begins suffering from disturbing, violent flashes of memory. Looking for Alexander also earned Leclerc and Marcel Beaulieu the Best Original Screenplay statuette.
• David “Sudz” Sutherland’s Love, Sex and Eating the Bones, in which a man (Hill Harper) discovers much to his dismay that his love of pornography has made him afraid of actual sexual contact.

Supporting winners Jennifer Jason Leigh & Jean Lapointe

In the Genies’ supporting categories, the winners were U.S. actress Jennifer Jason Leigh for Don McKellar’s show business-centered comedy Childstar and Jean Lapointe for Érik Canuel’s real-life-based crime drama The Last Tunnel / Le dernier tunnel.

The Best Adapted Screenplay award went to Luc Dionne and Sylvain Guy for another real-life-based crime drama: Pierre Houle’s Machine Gun Molly / Monica la mitraille, based on the life of 1960s Montreal bank robber and folk heroine of sorts Monica Proietti (played, as Monica Sparvieri, by Best Actress nominee Céline Bonnier – who, as it happens, is also featured in The Last Tunnel).

Starring Charlize Theron, Penélope Cruz, Stuart Townsend, and Thomas Kretschmann as four people whose lives are torn asunder in 1930s and 1940s Europe, screenwriter-director John Duigan’s Head in the Clouds topped more categories – four – than any other movie at this year’s ceremony: Best Cinematography, Editing, Costume Design, and Original Score.

Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott’s The Corporation, about the sociopolitical conceptualization and purpose of (mostly U.S. and Canadian) businesses, was the Best Documentary Feature, while the Genie Awards’ box office prize, the Golden Reel Award, went to Alexander Witt’s Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the latest installment in the critically derided but popular franchise starring Machine Gun Milla Jovovich.

Of note, apart from Childstar, every 2005 Genie Award in the acting, directing, writing, and Best Film categories went to French-Canadian releases.

This year’s Genie winners and nominees are listed below.

Bittersweet Memories with Best Actress Genie Award winner Pascale Bussières as singer Alys Robi.

Genie Awards: Winners & nominations

Film
Being Julia.
Love, Sex and Eating the Bones.
Bittersweet Memories.
Looking for Alexander.
* The Triplets of Belleville.

Director
Denise Filiatrault – Bittersweet Memories.
Pierre Houle – Machine Gun Molly.
Bronwen Hughes – Stander.
* Francis Leclerc – Looking for Alexander.
David “Sudz” Sutherland – Love, Sex and Eating the Bones.

Actor
Michel Côté – The Last Tunnel.
* Roy Dupuis – Looking for Alexander.
David La Haye – Battle of the Brave / Nouvelle-France.
Ian McKellen – Emile.
Nick Stahl – Twist.

Actress
Isabelle Blais – Love and Magnets / Les aimants.
Céline Bonnier – Machine Gun Molly.
* Pascale Bussières – Bittersweet Memories.
Emily Hampshire – Blood.
Jacinthe Lagüe – The Five of Us / Elles étaient cinq.

Supporting Actress
Juliette Gosselin – Battle of the Brave.
* Jennifer Jason Leigh – Childstar.
Sylvie Moreau – Love and Magnets.
Ellen Page – Wilby Wonderful.
Susana Salazar – A Silent Love.

Supporting Actor
Gary Farmer – Twist.
Brendan Fehr – Sugar.
Bruce Greenwood – Being Julia.
* Jean Lapointe – The Last Tunnel.
Kyle Maclachlan – Touch of Pink.

Original Screenplay
Denise Filiatrault – Bittersweet Memories.
Federico Hidalgo & Paulina Robles – A Silent Love.
* Francis Leclerc & Marcel Beaulieu – Looking for Alexander.
Don McKellar & Michael Goldbach – Childstar.
David “Sudz” Sutherland – Love, Sex and Eating the Bones.

Adapted Screenplay
Joël Champetier & Daniel Roby – White Skin / La Peau blanche.
Jerry Ciccoritti – Blood.
* Luc Dionne & Sylvain Guy – Machine Gun Molly.
Todd Klinck, Jaie Laplante & John Palmer – Sugar.
Jacob Tierney – Twist.

Cinematography
Louis de Ernsted – Battle of the Brave.
Bernard Couture – The Last Tunnel.
Pierre Mignot – Bittersweet Memories.
* Paul Sarossy – Head in the Clouds.
André Turpin – Childstar.

Editing
Jean-François Bergeron – The Last Tunnel.
Richard Comeau – The Five of Us.
* Dominique Fortin – Head in the Clouds.
Reginald Harkema – Childstar.
Yvann Thibodeau – Bittersweet Memories.

Original Score
Benoît Charest – The Triplets of Belleville.
Michel Corriveau – The Last Tunnel.
Pierre Duchesne – Looking for Alexander.
* Terry Frewer – Head in the Clouds.
Charles Papasoff – So the Moon Rises / La Lune viendra d’elle-même.

Production Design
André-Line Beauparlant – Camping sauvage.
Jonathan Lee & Gilles Aird – Head in the Clouds.
Jean Bécotte – The Last Tunnel.
Michel Proulx – Machine Gun Molly.
* Jean-Baptiste Tard – Battle of the Brave.

Costume Design
François Barbeau – Battle of the Brave.
* Mario Davignon – Head in the Clouds.
Sophie Lefebvre – Camping sauvage.
Denis Sperdouklis – Bittersweet Memories.
Michèle Hame – Machine Gun Molly.

Documentary
* The Corporation, dir.: Mark Achbar & Jennifer Abbott.
Mr. Mergler’s Gift, dir.: Beverly Shaffer.
What Remains of Us / Ce qu’il reste de nous, dir.: François Prévost & Hugo Latulippe.

Original Song
* “Pantaloon in Black,” Twist – Ron Proulx & Jacob Tierney.
“Ma Nouvelle France,” Battle of the Brave – Luc Plamondon & Patrick Doyle.
“Ignorance Is Beautiful (Help Me),” Childstar – Kyprios.
“Le Blues de Monica,” Machine Gun Molly – Lorraine Richard, Michel Cusson & Pierre Houle.
“Something’s Coming,” Wilby Wonderful – Rebecca Jenkins.

Overall Sound
* The Last Tunnel.
Emile.
Head in the Clouds.
Looking for Alexander.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

Sound Editing
Camping sauvage.
Head in the Clouds.
The Last Tunnel.
Machine Gun Molly.
* Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

Live Action Short
* Capacité 11 personnes, dir.: Gaël d’Ynglemare.
Choke.
Desastre.
The Dog Walker.
TV Dinner…(Burp!).

Animated Short
Louise.
Mabel’s Saga.
The Man with No Shadow / L’homme sans ombre.
* Ryan, dir.: Chris Landreth.
Through My Thick Glasses.

Claude Jutra Award: Daniel Roby – White Skin.

Golden Reel Award: Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

“Animated Feature Wins One Genie Award” endnotes

Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television website.

The Triplets of Belleville image: Sony Pictures Classics.

Pascale Bussières Bittersweet Memories image: Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm.

“Animated Feature Wins One Genie Award: Best Picture” last updated in April 2022.