Seducing Doctor Lewis

The small fishing village of St. Marie-La-Mauderne, Quebec is filled with underdogs awaiting adoption. Its residents roam like zombies along the boardwalk pathways to and from the local bar. Life revolves around the monthly welfare cheques that last two weeks. They’re the forgotten outsiders who have resisted all temptations of the city and the jobs that await them there. They are proud.

And obnoxious.

Jean-François Pouliot’s Seducing Doctor Lewis aims and succeeds at being cute and confident. It’s a light comedy aimed at appealing to the broadest of audiences while really hitting home to those displaced villagers who actually are going through similar situations in fishing villages across Canada. That still didn’t make me want to stop gagging by the time the film was over.

What St. Marie-La-Mauderne really needs is a factory. Then all 125 of its residents will have work and not have to walk like zombies. Not only will they have jobs, but they will gain a sense of purpose and an identity. But in order to get a factory, they must have a doctor. With the riches that can be had in the city, why would any want to come to St. Marie-La-Mauderne? Well, the city doctor in an isolated town worked for TV’s Northern Exposure, so why not here? After getting caught with some cocaine, fast-living Montreal plastic surgeon Christopher Lewis (David Boutin) arrives in St. Marie-La-Mauderne. What he doesn’t know is that all of its residents are putting on a good face and learning to play cricket so that he will fall for the village’s charm and stay permanently.

When you have a bunch of quirky characters playing pretend, there’s bound to be a good amount of hearty laughs. There are, but nearly every one of them is telegraphed far in advance. It’s a little embarrassing sitting in a theater and chuckling (or groaning in many instances) a few seconds ahead of the people sitting behind you.

While most of the characters do show signs of having a heart and personality, the writing is too predictable and shallow. The film waddles in the story of the underdog village waiting for a sad-sack owner to fall into adopting them. As I reflect on the slight endearment I felt towards these people, it’s simply constructed as the viewer being meant to feel sorry for them because they feel sorry for themselves. Pouliot misses a huge opportunity to make a scathing commentary on the isolation similar townships and villages feel. It’s touched on and implied but never explored in any depth beyond “we hate the city and the city hates us.” Instead his film opts for the all-pleasing route.

I’m not one who would adopt a puppy simply because it’s ‘cute.’ There’s got to be other reasons because give a little puppy some time and it’ll lose grow and lose its cuteness. It took all of about 30 minutes of Seducing Doctor Lewis to trigger the same sort of effect on me. While I found St. Marie-La-Mauderne to be gorgeous and initially appealing in a quirky way, those feelings soon changed to annoyance and never looked back.