La Tête de Normande St-Onge aka Normande is a 1975 French-Canadian film directed by Gilles Carle. The film stars Carole Laure as Normande St-Onge, a woman slowly losing her grip on reality as difficult circumstances lead her to retreat into a fantasy world. The demands of her family and the stress of daily life drive a woman’s mind into permanent fantasy as a way to cope.
Normande St-Onge (Carole Laure) works in a drug store and dreams of being a cabaret dancer. Her mother, Berthe (Renée Girard), has been confined to a mental institution by Normande’s uncle, Jean-Paul (Denys Arcand). But Normande, who does not believe her mother is insane, releases her from the institution and brings her home. They live in a large house with a variety of eccentric characters, including Normande’s sister, Pierrette (Carmen Giroux), her boyfriend, Bouliane (Raymond Cloutier), and a strange magician named Carol (Reynald Bouchard). Also in the mix is a sculptor (J.-Léo Gagnon) who lives in the basement and is obsessed with creating a life-sized nude replica of Normande.
All these people depend on Normande in various ways, exploiting her and finally rejecting her. The mother-daughter roles are reversed, and Berthe essentially becomes Normande’s surrogate child. As Berthe slowly returns to normalcy, Normande retreats increasingly to fantasy and sexual dreams in which she is always the center of attention. Although rehabilitated, Berthe is institutionalized once again, while Normande, desperate to be loved, is driven mad by the demands of those around her.
Widely acclaimed on its release as director Gilles Carle’s best film to date, La Tête de Normande St-Onge showcases Carle’s characteristic concern with marginalized individuals living on the fringes of society, united against anything that represents an exclusive sense of normality.
The Other Cinema 