Nô (film)
Encyclopedia
is a 1998 film by director Robert Lepage
Robert Lepage
Robert Lepage, is a playwright, actor, film director, and stage director from Québec City, Québec, and is one of Canada's most honoured theatre artists.- Life and work :...

. It was based on one segment in Lepage's play Seven Streams of the River Ota.

The title is a pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...

 which reflects the film's dramatic structure, linking the 1980 Quebec referendum
1980 Quebec referendum
The 1980 Quebec referendum was the first referendum in Quebec on the place of Quebec within Canada and whether Quebec should pursue a path toward sovereignty. The referendum was called by Quebec's Parti Québécois government, which strongly favoured secession from Canada...

 (in which the "no" won) to Japanese
NO
NO, N.O., No, or No. may refer to:* One of a pair of English words, yes and no, which signal confirmation or a negative response respectively.- Geographical locations :* Norway, ISO 3166-1 country code* Lake No, Sudan...

 theatre.

Plot

The film is set in 1970 at the height of the FLQ
Front de libération du Québec
The Front de libération du Québec was a left-wing Quebecois nationalist and Marxist-Leninist paramilitary group in Quebec, Canada. It was active between 1963 and 1970, and was regarded as a terrorist organization for its violent methods of action...

 bombings in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, known as the October Crisis
October Crisis
The October Crisis was a series of events triggered by two kidnappings of government officials by members of the Front de libération du Québec during October 1970 in the province of Quebec, mainly in the Montreal metropolitan area.The circumstances ultimately culminated in the only peacetime use...

. During the Crisis, Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau instituted the War Measures Act
War Measures Act
The War Measures Act was a Canadian statute that allowed the government to assume sweeping emergency powers in the event of "war, invasion or insurrection, real or apprehended"...

, which resulted in martial law on the streets of Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

. The central character, Sophie (Anne-Marie Cadieux
Anne-Marie Cadieux
Anne-Marie Cadieux is a Canadian actress, film director and screenwriter. She has won a Jutra Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Le Coeur au Poing and in 2008 was nominated for a Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for her role in Toi .- External links :...

), is an actress working in Osaka
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...

, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 at Expo '70
Expo '70
was a World's Fair held in Suita, Osaka, Japan between March 15 and September 13, 1970. The theme of the Expo was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In Japanese Expo '70 is often referred to as Ōsaka Banpaku...

, while her boyfriend Michel (Alexis Martin) is an FLQ sympathizer. Sophie discovers that she is pregnant and phones Michel, but before she can tell him, two FLQ friends suddenly turn up at his apartment looking for a place to hide, and Michel has to hang up. Sophie, who is unaware of the crises happening in Montreal, is upset by Michel apparently not wanting to talk to her, and isn't even sure if he is the father. She has to decide whether to stay and get an abortion in Japan, where abortion is legal, or keep the baby and return to Montreal the next day as planned. Meanwhile, she has to avoid the advances of fellow actor François-Xavier (Éric Bernier) and survive a dinner with Canadian ambassador Walter (Richard Fréchette) and his difficult wife Patricia (Marie Gignac
Marie Gignac
Marie Gignac is a two-time Genie Award–nominated actress. Gignac has been nominated twice in the category of Best Supporting Actress each for Le Confessional and La Vie secrète des gens heureux....

). Sophie's interpreter friend Hanako (Marie Brassard
Marie Brassard
Marie Brassard is a Quebec actress, author and theatre director living in Montreal. For many years her professional endeavors were closely linked with Robert Lepage...

), a Japanese woman blinded by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...

, is preparing to move to Vancouver with her Canadian interpreter boyfriend. In the meantime, in Montreal, Michel's two friends are plotting to set off a bomb, but they end up blowing up Michel's apartment by mistake.
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