''Valérie'' is a 1969

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, ...

Canadian

erotic film Sexual content has been found in films since the early days of the industry, and the presentation of aspects of sexuality in film, especially human sexuality, has been controversial since the development of the medium. Films which display or sugges ...

directed by

Denis Héroux Denis Héroux, (; 15 July 1940 – 10 December 2015) was a Canadian film director and producer. Biography Born in Montreal, Quebec, he was the older brother of prolific Quebec film and television producer Claude Héroux. Héroux wanted to beco ...

. It was the first Quebec film to show

nudity Nudity is the state of being in which a human is without clothing. While estimates vary, for the first 90,000 years of pre-history, anatomically modern humans were naked, having lost their body hair, living in hospitable climates, and not ...

. It turned an unprecedented gross of $1.68 million, making it the highest-grossing Canadian film of its time.

Plot

Danielle Ouimet upon leaving a convent with the leader of a motorcycle gang, discovers the

hippie A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, counterculture of the mid-1960s to early 1970s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States and spread to dif ...

culture of

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

and turns to prostitution. This improbable storyline, made famous by the frank display of nudity and sexuality, came from a culture that was still labouring under a strong sense of

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

guilt. It was the first of a group of films known as maple-syrup porn.

Production

''Valérie'' was filmed in August and September 1968, with a budget of $99,000 ().

Release

The film was released in Montreal on 2 May 1969, by Cinépix, the producer and distributor. It was the highest-grossing of all-time in Canada with a gross of $1,684,000 and earned $2 million () after being shown in forty countries. It was the most attended Quebec film since ''

Little Aurore's Tragedy ''Little Aurore's Tragedy'' ( "little Aurore, the child Martyr") is a Canadian 1952 Quebec biographical drama movie that was directed by Jean-Yves Bigras, produced by L'Alliance Cinematographique Canadienne and distributed by Renaissance Films D ...

''. The film was seen by 153,734 people in France.

References

Works cited

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External links