A 37-year-old teacher will succumb to the charms – not without having first resisted – of a student 20 years her junior, causing a family crisis and her brutal fall, which will lead her to prison.
This is the backstory of "Chouchou", the new drama series by Simon Boulerice, whose filming is coming to an end these days in the Montreal area.
Although Chanelle "Chouchou" Chouinard's gesture is condemned because she is in a position of authority, her interpreter, actress Evelyne Brochu, identified with her from the start.
“She is an ordinary person, a woman who looks like me. I tell myself that the more I look for her in myself, the more we will be able to identify with her. And that's what's going to be interesting: how someone like us rocks. My job was more to look for the ways in me that would make it happen to me,” she said.
The series has several arcs, from the meeting between the two protagonists to dazzling love, through danger, collapse and reconstruction. "All that in eight episodes, so it won't be flat," laughed the actress met on the set in a Laval high school.
Evelyne Brochu, who also shot her last scenes of the second season of "Paris Police 1900" at the same time, in France, indicates that her character in "Chouchou" is trying "very very hard" to resist the charms of her young pupil, who loves literature like her.
"What makes that at a given moment we can no longer resist, that's what is interesting to see", she added, stressing that a "great passion so luminous, at least for a brief moment” will ultimately prove to be “devastating”, the repercussions of such a story reaching several people, including Chanelle’s two children and her husband.
A person around Evelyne Brochu experienced a similar situation, but instead of sinking into passion, she offered the student a platonic relationship, seeing him every week, taking care to leave the door open to avoid any ambiguity.
Lévi Doré, who is in high demand, plays the young Sandrick, who is both confident and vulnerable, he who is raised by a dysfunctional, lying and alcoholic mother played by Sophie Cadieux.
“There is clearly a maternal instinct that [Sandrick] can find in Chanelle. The two find themselves in a situation that is slipping, which is serious, but it's a love story, that's the complexity of the thing, ”said the 22-year-old comedian.
Sophie Cadieux, in the role of this complicated mother, has a score of choice. “There are a lot of battles, she screams all the time […] The “fun” for her is also explosive”, mentioned the actress.
Steve Laplante's character, Jeff, who is Chanelle's husband, doesn't have as much fun. Cuckold, he even offers Sandrick a job at his grocery store without knowing that he is sleeping with his wife. “He gets hit by a train and is destroyed. Until then, in his life, there was no stake.
Intimate scenes with respect and security
As there are physical connections between the teacher and her student, we called on an intimacy coordinator on the set.
“There was a lot of respect. [...] The energy was very focused on everyone's sense of security. But through that, you have to find freedom for it to happen, it's important, it's the heart of the series, it's a great dazzling, loving and erotic encounter, "said Evelyne Brochu, who the impression that the ways of shooting intimate scenes have evolved in the right direction in recent years.
Produced by Pass GO, in collaboration with Bell Media, “Chouchou” will be broadcast this fall on Noovo. The series is co-directed by Marie-Claude Blouin and Félix Tétreault.
