The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“A grand, gloriously acidic indictment of the pervasive corruption that infiltrated all corners of ​’70s Quebec … This is one of Canada’s sharpest and most incriminating cinematic self-portraits.”

Canadian Independent Pictures

Quebec’s political class is brutally skewered—and real-life counterparts only negligibly veiled—in Denys Arcand’s expertly orchestrated crime-syndicate satire, a Directors’ Fortnight selection at Cannes. Dirty Money​’s Luce Guilbeault is the Mrs. Padovani of the title, estranged wife to a Montreal bigwig (Jean Lajeunesse) with mafia ties and a crooked mayor in his pocket. Banished by her husband after an affair with a rival contractor, her reappearance in town—violating a do-or-die ultimatum—threatens to ruin an haute dinner party celebrating the completion of a highway project. Co-written by Arcand and novelist Jacques Benoît, this acerbic ensemble picture draws from the Rules of the Game playbook—politicians and power brokers upstairs; hired guns and call girls below—while building toward the violent crescendo of a Hollywood gangster movie. The film’s dismantling of government villainy proved prescient when, more than three decades later, Quebec’s landmark public investigation into construction-contract corruption put mayors and mobsters in cahoots.

In French with English subtitles

“More than a sociological statement or an exposé of corruption: its scrupulously composed images, its editing struc­ture … and its use of sound eloquently depict the contradictions of the social order in Quebec … This biting social satire helped establish Arcand’s reputation as one of Quebec’s top directors.”

TIFF Canadian Film Encyclopedia