Misguided Casting Undercuts Emotional Impact of ‘Lilies’

In 1952 Quebec, Catholic Bishop Bilodeau is summoned to a maximum security prison to hear the confession of Simon Doucet, a dying man convicted of murder. But no sooner is he seated in the confessional than the bishop learns he’s there to rehash his own sins and to make his own confession.

Canadian director John Greyson’s gay romantic tragedy “Lilies,” adapted from a 1987 play by Michel Marc Bouchard, is so richly conceived and fluidly executed it’s a shame that he chose to give it the distracting artifice of drag theater. Every role in the story is played by a man, and the actors playing women make no effort to conceal that fact.

The female characters appear in flashbacks that transport the bishop, and the audience, from the prison to northern Quebec province 40 years earlier.

It’s there, on the estate of the swank Hotel Roberval, that three 18-year-old men--Simon (Jason Cadieux), his lover Vallier (Danny Gilmore) and his ex-lover Bilodeau (Matthew Ferguson)--spend a critical summer struggling with their identities, their consciences and the expectations of their elders.

Simon is in love with Vallier, but, with the affection shown him by the exotic Parisian Lydie-Anne (Alexander Chapman, doing a sort of earthy RuPaul), he’s determined to put his homosexual affairs behind him and get interested in girls.

That decision is devastating to Vallier, who declares his love for Simon before shocked guests at a dinner party, and to Bilodeau, who offers to give up plans for seminary school if Simon will go off with him.

Simon’s rejection of Bilodeau has tragic consequences, whose lingering mysteries can only be revealed--40 years later--by the bishop.

Greyson stages all this on three levels. The prison chapel, encircled by barbed wire, is converted into a theater where Simon’s fellow inmates do a slide show and perform scenes from a play that re-creates the mood at Roberval in 1912, and recalls the sexual tension among Simon, Vallier and Bilodeau.

With amazing smoothness, the gray prison stage dissolves to the actual setting at Roberval, in all its colorful beauty, where the story picks up in period costume, and with the same prison inmates in all the various roles.

From there on, Greyson intercuts scenes from Roberval with confrontations between the older Simon (Aubert Pallascio) and Bilodeau (Marcel Sabourin), whom we see in both the prison setting and as observers in scenes from the countryside.

Greyson’s technical virtuosity, however, is ultimately the story’s emotional undoing. There are simply too many things being attempted simultaneously for the human drama to take hold. Bouchard writes in a neo-Shakespearean style, which makes the period story theatrical enough, but with principal characters--Lydie-Anne and Vallier’s wounded mother, the Countess Marie (Brent Carver)--portrayed by husky-voiced men, the illusion is lost completely.

* MPAA rating: Unrated. Times guidelines: nudity, sexuality.

‘Lilies’

Brent Carver: The Countess

Marcel Sabourin: The Bishop

Aubert Pallascio: Older Simon

Jason Cadieux: Simon

Matthew Ferguson: Young Bilodeau

Danny Gilmore: Vallier

Alexander Chapman: Lydie-Anne

Ian D. Clark: Chaplain/Father St. Michael

Alliance Communications presents a Triptych Media/Galafilm co-production. Based on the play “Les Feluettes” by Michel Marc Bouchard. Director John Greyson. Producers Anna Stratton, Robin Cass, Arnie Gelbart. Screenplay Michel Marc Bouchard. Photography Daniel Jobin. Production design Sandra Kybartas. Costumes Linda Muir. Editor Andre Corriveau. Music Mychael Danna. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

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* Exclusively at the Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (213) 848-3500; Art Theater, 2025 E. 4th St., Long Beach, (310) 438-5435; and Edwards University, 4245 Campus Drive, Irvine, (714) 854-8811.