Léo Lespérance (Rémy Girard), a retired bus driver, moves his family to Hollywood Beach, Florida, where he sinks his life savings into a ramshackle twelve-room motel. Things seem to go well at first. But Léo soon begins to experience problems with his teenage daughter Carmen (Marie-Josée Croze), his son Cyrille (Guillaume Lemay-ThiviPrge) and, most of all, with his wife Ginette (Pauline Lapointe), who has developed a romantic attachment to a has-been lounge singer named Romeo Laflamme (Michael Sarrazin). All the while, Léo must fend off the machinations of a determined local land developer (Margot Kidder) who has set her sights on Léo’s property. However, after several bad turns, things eventually work out for la famille.
La Florida is a somewhat simplistic comedy that blends the American Dream (financial independence) with the Québécois dream (a life of sunny luxury in Florida). The film was very popular in Quebec; the opening sequence, which shows the family packing up to leave during a Montreal blizzard, has a special resonance in Canadian cinema. La Florida failed to take home any Genie Awards, despite eight nominations, but won the Golden Reel Award for highest box-office gross. |
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