The review on the DVD proclaimed that this film was "Quebec's Titanic". That was about right: a film using sentimentality and a historical setting to distract from a weak plot and wooden characters.

The premise of the film is that pre-1960s Quebec was a miserable, oppressive place where the Church and the wealthy controlled the peasants like some sort of Catholic Iran; this allows the wealthy bad guy to brtualize the poor hero and heroine with impunity. No doubt, this had some historical accuracy (certainly in the minds of Quebec film-makers), but it isn't very interesting to watch the main characters flail about helplessly, unable to overcome their lot in life, while some bad guy manipulates them.

Compare this film to the much better "Louis Cyr", where a man growing up in the same time period and subject to the same low status overcomes his obstacles and becomes an inspiration for generations.

The actors are some of the best that Quebec has, but each main character in Seraphin was so unidimensional that it almost felt like a parody. The rich bad guy is obsessed with money to the point where I confused him with Scrooge McDuck - he literally died with gold coins in his hand. The heroic lumberjack is so heroic that at one point he starts cutting wood in doubletime to pay off the rich bad guy. The damsel in distress is so distressed that I had to ask how a human being can reach adulthood without a backbone -- the one redeeming feature of Titanic was that the heroine took some control over her situation and tried, at the very least, to not die, something that Karine Vanasse's character wasn't up to attempting.

If our cable was working, I wouldn't have watched it to the end.