I recently went to see the new movie Nos Belles-soeurs, an adaptation of Michel Tremblay’s celebrated play Les Belles-soeurs (The Sisters-in-Law). In both direction and acting, the film does justice to the richness of the Quebec playwright’s characters, and transitions smoothly from the story’s comedic beginning to the ending’s final drama. This viewing gave me the opportunity to reflect on the depth of the work.
The story is so simple: Germaine Lauzon, a stay-at-home mom from Plateau-Mont-Royal (a poor neighborhood that was emblematic of Montreal’s working-class milieu at the time), wins a million Gold Star stamps. These stamps, when she sticks them in the company’s catalog, allow her to choose from a vast array of furniture, appliances and knick-knacks. Exhilarated, she invites her sister and neighbors over for an evening of stamp-pasting.
Germaine’s fortune, however, provokes the secret hatred of the others. “What’s she ever done, Mme. Lauzon, to deserve all this? Nothing! Not a goddamn thing,” lament these envious women. What follows is a tragi-comic exposition of the complaints of these housewives, caught between daily chores, children, husbands, money problems . . . and “goddamn sex”! Through the alienating routine of family life comes the exhausted cry of these unhappy prisoners: “I’m sick of this stupid rotten life!”
The first performance of the play in 1968 immediately caused a scandal, among other things because Michel Tremblay had dared to make his characters speak in joual—this genuine and raw vernacular of the Québécois working class. For one of the first times in Québec history, ordinary people were showcased, with their vulgarity, their flaws and their humanity. Tremblay said at that time: “We are not going to be ashamed anymore, and we’ll have people speak the way they speak in real life.” This was horrifying for the elites and their hoity-toity way of talking!
Much to the chagrin of the self-righteous French-Canadian high society, the play quickly became a success that spread beyond Québec’s borders. Today, it’s the most widely performed Québécois play in the world, with 225 productions in nearly 30 languages and 25 countries. The fact that people around the world can relate to the unique story of a few people from a working-class neighborhood in Montréal is a testament to its universality.
A mark of great art, Tremblay’s work tells us more about the truth of the world than any report or archival document. For these “sisters-in-law” are our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers. It’s a tale of working-class women, and one that will never cease to awaken in me the revolutionary desire to do them justice. These are the people I’m fighting for.
