Year: 1975
Language: French
Format: 35mm Colour
Runtime: 77 min
Director: Jean Lefebvre
Producer: Marguerite Duparc
Writer: Jean Lefebvre
Cinematographer: Jean-Charles Tremblay
Editor: Marguerite Duparc
Sound: Jacques Blain
Cast: Paule Baillargeon, Monique Mercure, Pierre Curzi, Frédérique Collin, Jocelyn Bérubé, Denise Morelle, Guy Thauvette, France Demers, Raymond Cloutier, Jean-Guy Moreau, Louise Cuerrier, Gilles Proulx
Production Company: Cinak Compagnie Cinématographique Ltée.

L’ Amour blessé [confidences de la nuit] captures one night in the life of a divorced working woman (Louise Cuerrier) as she sits alone in her apartment listening to a radio phone-in show called Confidences de la nuit. The film follows her nightly routine as she bathes, does her nails and eavesdrops on her neighbours, while the radio advertisements, the announcers and the callers to the show provide the substance of her evening. At one point, she calls the programme to protest the announcer’s cavalier treatment of a previous caller who spoke of wanting to leave her husband. The protagonist, who was beaten by her own husband before leaving him, tries to encourage the caller, but cannot explain why the freedom she herself fought for has resulted only in loneliness and despair. After hanging up, she receives threatening phone calls from her mother-in-law and estranged husband, who heard her on the air.

L’ Amour blessé [confidences de la nuit], like many of Jean Pierre Lefebvre’s films, refuses to allow its audience to become complacent or passive. His thirteenth feature (shot in two evenings on a budget of $54,000) is a film built on sound, and it counts on the intelligence and interest of the viewer to fill in the spaces and the silences provided. Though visually sparse (only one character appears on the screen), the film’s extraordinarily rich and subtle use of radio sounds, phone calls and noises from the neighbourhood provides a terrifying portrait of defeat, solitude and the mass media’s pervasive promotion of living vicariously.