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PROFILE
True Romance
Geneviève Bujold shines in the
understated love story Still Mine
BY JASON ANDERSON
15
I
n the new film Still Mine,
Geneviève Bujold stands on
a beach and stares out at the
ocean, her features as gentle
as the waves rolling into shore.
It’s a hauntingly lovely scene,
one in which the actor, greyhaired and 70, radiates that
ineffable, watchable quality
that made her Canada’s most
luminous export more than four
decades ago.
Written and directed by
Torontonian Michael McGowan,
Still Mine features Bujold as Irene,
the wife of a proud New Brunswick
farmer who battles local bureaucrats
over the new house he’s building for
GENEVIÈVE
THE GREAT
Five memorable
movies
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his Alzheimer’s-stricken spouse.
Though Irene is often presented
as a figure of serenity, the fact
that she’s using this quiet waterside
moment to sneak her first cigarette
in 50 years points to a more irascible
side of her personality. “She’s quite
feisty,” says Bujold.
The word applies equally well
to Bujold, who has always been
too headstrong to conform to
expectations of what a star should
be. Raised by working-class parents
in Montreal’s east end, she began
lighting up stages and screens
soon after exiting theatre school.
After embarking on a series of
extraordinary collaborations with
(KAMOURASKA) NEW LINE CINEMA/FRANCE CINEMA PRODUCTIONS;
(ANNE OF THE THOUSAND DAYS) UNIVERSAL PICTURES
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1973 Kamouraska Bujold secured her
national-treasure status with the lead
role in Claude Jutra’s adaptation of the
classic Anne Hébert tragedy about love
and murder in rural Quebec.
1969 Anne of the Thousand Days
A stirring performance as the doomed
Anne Boleyn earned Bujold a Golden
Globe Award, an Academy Award
nomination and—according to some
unkind remarks in his recently published
diaries—a multi-year affair with her costar Richard Burton.
1978 Coma
Appearing opposite Michael
Douglas in a Michael Crichton
medical thriller finally made
Bujold a full-fledged Hollywood
star at the age of 35.r d . c a 0 5 / 1 3
(COMA) METRO - GOLDWYN-MAYER; (THE TROTSKY) ALLIANCE
FILMS; (DEAD RINGERS) 20TH CENTURY FOX
watch the Still Mine trailer with
Quebec directors like Michel
Brault and Paul Almond (her first
husband), the petite ingenue gained
international renown in 1969 for her
performance as the Anne Boleyn
to Richard Burton’s King Henry
VIII in Anne of the Thousand Days.
Yet Bujold soon clashed with
Hollywood brass over roles that
could’ve ensured her big-league
fame but wouldn’t secure her
happiness. She famously walked
away from her contract with
Universal Studios, and the resulting
lawsuit was dropped only when she
agreed to appear in the schlocky
Earthquake and Swashbuckler. She
now approaches her work history
1988 Dead Ringers
Bujold gave one of her most
compelling showings—as
a woman involved with
twin gynecologists—in this
creepfest that’s creepy even
by David Cronenberg
standards.
2009 The Trotsky Bujold
returned to Montreal and
proved there truly are no
small roles when she took
on the supporting part of
a hard-nosed school-board
official in the winsome Jay
Baruchel comedy.
with equanimity. “The films I did
were the films I was supposed to
do,” she says of her remarkably
varied, and arguably erratic, career.
“I’m not an actress who can do
anything. I would not do it if I
couldn’t see on the page something
I could become.”
The 1978 suspense megahit Coma
gave Bujold marquee status in
Hollywood but did nothing to
temper her desire to go her own
way: she retired from acting for
several years to be a full-time
mother; and found herself the
subject of intense fan scrutiny in
1994 when she abruptly left her
leading role in the television series
Star Trek: Voyager three days into
shooting, blaming the long hours.
In recent years, Bujold has been
seen largely in supporting roles in
small indies. That’s part of the
appeal of Irene and Still Mine.
Based on a true story, the film has
a built-in hook: it echoes two
acclaimed late-life love stories,
Sarah Polley’s feature directorial
debut Away From Her, and this
year’s Oscar winner Amour. Yet it
also sets itself apart by being the
most romantic of the three.
McGowan, Bujold and American
star James Cromwell demonstrate
tremendous sensitivity and warmth
in their portrayal of an elderly
17
something reflected in
her home in Malibu.
“I live in a tiny little
place,” she says. “It’s
like a hobbit house. I
open the door of my
bedroom at night and
I hear the coyotes
howling, which can be
chilling when they get
going. I can hear the
crickets in the ravine
and the frogs. There’s a
whole natural life there
that nourishes me.”
Her eyes widen as
Bujold compares her partnership with James
she remembers the
Cromwell in Still Mine to “a waltz.”
exact moment when
couple whose fierce bond is tested
she was seduced by California,
by new challenges. It’s rare for a
where she’s lived since March of
film to acknowledge that seniors
1974. “I arrived with my six-year-old
may still feel the passions
son,” she says. “There we were on
simmering within Irene and Craig;
the sand after all the slush in
Still Mine is also frank about the
Montreal. We stood for a good halfhardships that wear down any
hour without moving—my sweet
lifelong relationship. As Bujold
little kid could not believe it. I was
says, “Love is not just about a
supposed to go for three months,
happy face. It opens all the doors if
but I’ve been there ever since.”
you’re willing to go through them.”
For Bujold to find peace of mind
Making the film in northeastern
in a place so closely associated with
Ontario, near North Bay, called
glitz, glamour and artificiality
up memories of Bujold’s grandseems like a fitting idiosyncrasy for
parents—farmers who lived near
a woman with such a singular
Quebec’s Gaspé coast—and of
career. “That’s why I sometimes
family trips to the Laurentians.
think I shouldn’t plan too much,”
These childhood experiences
she says. “You’ve got to stay open.”
instilled an awe of nature in Bujold,
Still Mine opens in theatres May 3.
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