It’s a story of friendship, of shattered dreams of fatherhood, of reunions too. Guillaume Laurin, Marc-André Grondin and Guillaume Cyr (among others!) will soon meet on the small screen, in an choral TV series on friendship between men like we rarely see. On the menu: emotion, vulnerability, brotherhood.
Exit toxic masculinity here, we understand. Place, on the contrary, “positive masculinity”. It is written as is in the press release announcing the filming of this original and resolutely modern series called Bellefleur, which we are expecting on Crave for the spring. The 10 30-minute episodes will be directed by Jeanne Leblanc (Les Nôtres), with an attractive cast, including Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse, Marilyne Castonguay, Nathalie Doummar and Sarah-Maude Beauchesne.
It is to the duo composed of Sarah-Maude Beauchesne and Nicola Morel (lovers in life) that we also owe this original idea and this different scenario, felt and inspired, deliberately inspiring. We will come back to this.
The main plot of the story? “I want to say: friendship,” responds without hesitation the director Jeanne Leblanc, hanging on the sidelines of filming, open to the media on Monday, in a high school in the north of the island of Montreal. “There is a whole reflection on the strength of these friendships,” she says, pleased to deconstruct several masculine stereotypes in the process.
The starting point: the breakup of a certain Nicolas, alias “Nico”, played by Guillaume Laurin (subscriber to the roles of “bad boys”, who we will see here in a first leading role, as a good guy to boot), who loses his role as “father-in-law” with this separation.
To absorb the shock of this suddenly aborted fatherhood, he returns to his hometown, finds his brother and his childhood friends there (including his best friend, played by Marc-André Grondin). Basically: the members of “his gang”, and their friends, around whom the entire series will be knitted, we guess.
We won’t know more about the parallel plots, which we are told are solid and dramatic, with a hint of humor to make everything digestible. This is a comedy-drama, after all.
“Everyone has a bit of their own plot, it’s very sentimental,” also confides Guillaume Laurin. These are guys who are going through big deals in their emotional lives. And these are guys who have a gang of friends to talk about. »
Yes, Guillaume Laurin, who we have rarely seen in such a tender, albeit tormented, role (“he is overwhelmed by a love too great for a child who is not his!”), recognizes himself “a lot” in this portrait. “Me, I am very close to my emotions with my friends, totally introspective,” confirms the man who also played the slightly toxic lover of Sarah-Maude Beauchesne in Fourchette. “Post
Same story from Maxime De Cotret (who will play Nico’s brother on screen). “Maybe I’m lucky, but me, my gang of guys, my friends, we’re all close to our emotions. » He also hopes that spectators will recognize themselves in these portraits of “benevolent” men, capable of listening and communicating. Men who “see themselves as they are, without judgment,” he sums up.
It is precisely because he did not recognize himself on screen that Nicola Morel (TV development designer at Trio Orange) wanted to launch into this TV series project on friendship. “On so many levels,” he says, “I was frustrated by what I was seeing [on screen]. »
That’s to say ? A series “for guys who are really there for each other.” Think: friendships stronger than anything, guys who love each other and who say it to each other, who talk to each other and listen to each other, you name it.
For three years, he looked into the subject with his lover, the actress, screenwriter and author Sarah-Maude Beauchesne (Le chalet, Cœur de slush), and together, they asked themselves several big and existential questions: “ What is it, she paraphrases, to be a man, what is it to be a feminist man, what is it to be a feminist man and to date a feminist woman. » Above all: “How do we organize ourselves in a heterosexual couple so that things continue to be healthy? […] And that’s all that we find in Bellefleur. »
