Gabriel Arcand (born June 4, 1949) is a French Canadian actor.
He is the brother of film director Denys Arcand.
He won the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television's award for Best Actor at the 6th Genie Awards in 1985 for his performance in Le Crime d'Ovide Plouffe and at the 2nd Canadian Screen Awards in 2014 for Le Démantèlement, and the award for Best Supporting Actor at the 8th Genie Awards in 1987 for Decline of the American Empire.
He was also nominated for Best Actor at the 3rd Genie Awards in 1982 for Les Plouffe and at the 20th Genie Awards for Post Mortem, and for Best Supporting Actor at the 2nd Genie Awards in 1981 for Suzanne and at the 20th Genie Awards in 1999 for Le Grand serpent du monde.
In 1910, Maria Chapdelaine, a young girl of seventeen, lived with her family on the banks of the Péribonka River, north of Lake Saint-Jean. The Chapdelaines work tirelessly to push the limits of the forest. In a home where even physical exhaustion cannot dampen the warmth of family life, Maria, strong and full of hope, finds herself faced with major dilemmas. Thrust into the world of adults, Maria will suddenly be forced to decide on her future as a woman.
Matthieu is a 33 year old Parisian who finds out that the father he never knew has died and decides to go to his funeral in order to meet his two siblings in Quebec. But once in Montréal, he realizes that nobody is aware of his existence or even interested in it. He is alone, in hostile territory…
Gaby owns a farm on which he raises lambs: Bouchard & Sons Farm. But he has no sons. Rather, he has two daughters that he raised like princesses and who live far away, in the big city. One day, the oldest asks him for some financial support so she doesn't end up losing her house...
Pierre, a retired professor in his early sixties ends up making a short, unsettling trip around Okinawa with Junko, a 40-year-old runaway wife. The confused intellectual would rather not get involved with this unlikely and unexpected lover but decides to follow his destiny, wherever it (she?) may take him.
Michel is a Belgian inventor. He cares for his father, a paralysed writer, is married to a Congolese woman and is the father of an interracial child whom he reassures as to his parentage. He discovers at the age of 41 that he was adopted, actually having been born in Sainte-Cécile, Quebec. In the summer of 2000, he travels to Quebec, supposedly to sell some of his inventions. While on a near-impossible quest to find his birth family in the town where he was born, he crosses paths with Louis Legros, son of another inventor, in a meeting which will change their lives.
Suspecting that the cecassion of the tides may indicate an impending earthquake, Seismologist Alice arrives in her hometown of Baie-Comeau, Quebec to commence her investigation. Soon confronted by numerous figures from her past, the unusual weather and inexplicable behavior of the citizens lead Alice to believe that something beyond her comprehension is occurring to her old hometown...
In this period thriller set near the turn of the century, Jan Thoreau is a Canadian trapper who lives with his wife Marie in a small community in the wilderness not far from Hudson Bay. Blake is a disturbed drifter who has murdered a man and has found a way to frame Jan for his crime. Jan is out tending to his traps when an Indian friend with psychic talents tells him Marie is in grave danger. Jan hurries back, but he has no idea just how serious matters are until he arrives home -- Jan is wanted by the law for a crime he didn't commit, while Blake is hiding out in his home, and has taken Marie hostage.
A quiet painter, separated from his wife for a year, receives a suitcase in the mail from his mother, whom he hasn't seen since infancy. He believes she abandoned him to his wealthy, paternal grandparents. The suitcase contains mementos and a diary, a long letter to him, written over the years, with details of her youth, her first job as a pianist at a cinema, the coming of talkies, her marriage, and how he came to live with his grandparents. As he reads through the materials and her story comes to life, his son Antoine, who's about 10 or 12, tries to break through his father's silence and sorrow by taking matters into his own hands.
Four very different Montreal university teachers gather at a rambling country house to prepare a dinner. Remy (married), Claude (a homosexual), Pierre (involved with a girlfriend) and Alain (a bachelor) discuss sex, the female body and their affairs with them. Meanwhile, their four female guests, Louise (Remy's wife of 15 years), Dominique (a spinster), Diane (a divorcée) and Danielle (Pierre's girlfriend) are spending the time at a downtown health gym. They also discuss sex, the female body and, naturally, men. Later in the evening, they finally meet at the country house and have dinner. A ninth guest, named Mario, who used to know Diane, drops in on the group for some talk and has a surprise of his own.
When a dead newborn is found, wrapped in bloody sheets, in the bedroom wastebasket of a young novice, psychiatrist Martha Livingston is called in to determine if the seemingly innocent novice, who knows nothing of sex or birth, is competent enough to stand trial for the murder of the baby.
Lucie the Quebecker and Nicole the Frenchwoman with the "funny accent" are both twenty-six, single and share their Montreal apartment as they share their joys and sorrows. The first works in radio, the second in an airline company, and both have a married lover who, every Friday evening, rushes off to a home that has been forsaken for a while, saying: "Bye, see you Monday"...
Although he is something of a layabout, and is still living with his mother, her death comes as something of a shock to Louis Pelletier (Gilbert Sicotte). Still, he has hopes of some sort of legacy and believes that his relatives will help him find a job. All his hopes are dashed when, before the funeral, his three aunts come to Quebec City to settle their sister's estate. As grasping and efficient a crew as ever strode a parlor, by the time they leave, the estate has been cleaned to the bones, as if by vultures.
Gina is a stripper at a popular local club. Everybody loves her and wants her. One night, a feared gang enters her motel room and gang-rape her violently. Soon afterward, she asks the services of criminals to help her exact revenge on those who attacked her.