Director Annie St-Pierre On the Sorrow and the Silly of Her Beautiful Live Action Short Contender, ‘Les Grandes Claques’

Annie St-Pierre’s shortlisted live action short film, Les Grandes Claques (Like the Ones I Used to Know), is a Christmas miracle of a movie. Set on Christmas Eve in 1983, St-Pierre captures the anticipation of Santa’s arrival for the kids and the dread of getting throughr another holiday for the adults. I’ve never seen a film set around the holidays that navigates humor, absurdity, and melancholy like this film does. I adore this movie.

Denis isn’t looking forward to picking up his kids from his in-laws’ house, and it’s not because he doesn’t like awkward small talk. He and his wife, Christiane, have recently divorced, and he isn’t sure how he belongs amid that family dynamic. Imagine what it feels like to spend numerous bright, loving holidays with relative strangers, and now that bond is over. What do you mean to one another?

While Grandes Claques isn’t totally autobiographical, St-Pierre was looking to capture a time period where divorce was new. Any time we have a marital squabble, we can turn to social media or websites to make a therapy appointment, but this was new terrain. It makes Denis’ plight more dire and awkward, and it sets him more adrift.

“It’s more auto-fiction. It’s a mix of real emotion of when I was young and of memories. It was important to me that the film was set at this time, because I wanted this golden age of experimental sharing custody of kids. Parents didn’t know how to do that, and they didn’t read all the books about what to do and what not to do. They were just doing their best. It was important for me to look at that with naivete of this period, and every other person in the family doesn’t know how to act. They are awkward, and they can’t imagine that they would be in the shoes that Denis finds himself in. No one has any model to try to relate to it. It’s too rare.”

I joked with St-Pierre about how so many of us seek out the classification of “what is a Christmas movie?” but she insists that Grandes Claques just happens to be set at that time. We have virtually no films that lean into the sadness of the holiday when you are almost required to be happy. There are some gorgeous shots of Christmas lights seen through a foggy and muggy window that captures the spirit of Denis’ heart.

“It’s not a Christmas movie, but I like the opposition of the cheeriness of the holiday and the heaviness of the situation. My DP, Etienne Roussy, and I did so many tests for the colors as it was important to me to feel those little lights of Christmas. They make you feel happy, but it also takes Denis out of it.”

We often make the mistake that when a group gets together or a party exists in a film that the director simply drops into the interactions. St-Pierre was eager to nail that spirit of adults leaving their cares behind to spike the eggnog and the kids running around screaming and doing whatever they wanted. It reminded me so much of those hectic times when I was a kid.

“That is really autofiction as well, because my family’s parties were like that. It was the summit of childhood fun, you can be the king of the house with your cousins and the adults will let you do anything, because they were a little drunk and they wouldn’t think about punishments. For me, it was important that we could feel it watching the film, but I didn’t want to point it out. That’s why I chose the opening scene where the kids are peeing in the bathroom together, it’s the essence of being a child. When we asked the kids to do the scene, they find that crazy. But after a few minutes, they just had so much fun and stepped into the moment for real. For the party, everyone had have references to play–even the extras–because they all had their own Christmas memories. Our Denis, Steve Laplante, is an amazing actor, so I didn’t have to feed him a lot with a backstory… even if I had a lot!   We shot in a small bungalow before COVID, we were 40 people there, kids were coughing and actors were kissing, without worrying like we have to do now… We gave too much sugar to the kids… it was like a real party!”

There is a sweet scene where Denis and Christiane interact and calmly (and almost lovingly) acknowledge each other’s presence. If this were a studio comedy, they would hate each other and a passive aggressive comment would dart out. What St-Pierre does here is more successful and more poignant. These characters have children with one another, so they will be in their lives for a number of more years, and their mutual respect shines through. Denis obviously still pines for her.

“He’s totally still in love with her, but he doesn’t have enough energy even just to have hope in his heart. When he is front of her, he is full of love, and she feels it. She is touched by it, because she has never had anything to blame on him. The 1980s of the country side could in a way feels a little like the 1960s in a big city… They married young, and she is ready for something else. You can see that the new man is really something else. Him and Denis don’t compare to each other, but neither man is the bad one. It’s sweet and sour like life is and forcing every one to act like they are nice and everything is fine isn’t always the answer… The answer can just be empathy.”

If you are a child, the Christmas season carries along a lot of feelings of innocence. People believe in Santa to varying degrees, but we also believe in things as adults, too. We want our kids to stay kids longer than they do, and we want them to hold onto that naivete for as long as possible. As kids get older and realize the potential of every passing year, we have to cope with that naivete forming into something more mature and more grown-up. The end of St-Pierre’s film, with Denis and one of his children looking forward, is the best kind of sad. It’s optimistic and thoughtful, but it’s tinged with a gratifying sadness of maturing with your parents.

“It was a metaphor for that moment where you stop believing in Santa. You learn something about life, and you are never the same again. You are never in that naïve childhood again. Family allows you to evolve and to grow, and it is the beginning of Julie’s life and it’s beginning of Denis’ life. It’s a double coming of age, and I wanted to see them going on a dark road without any lights. Santa Claus is almost dead, because he is down on the ground from pushing the car. In a way, Santa will never get up again since we are moving away from that part of childhood. That dark road is only a moment, but the car is rolling and it’s not the end. They are together on this road, and I like the poetic image of that. A child can decide to stay with a parent that is suffering, and they take on some of that suffering too. Julie decides to get in the car with her father, who is sad, and she would be a different person if she stayed at the party. It’s a micro moment that has a meta effect on her life.”

Les Grandes Claques (Like the Ones I Used to Know) is streaming through The New Yorker’s screening room.