Nominated for 11 Genie awards including best picture, best director, and best original screenplay, Seducing Doctor Lewis, a film by first-time director Jean-Francois Pouliot, is the biggest Québec success story of 2003, achieving higher box-office receipts than Lord of the Rings, Matrix Reloaded, and Barbarian Invasions. As the film opens, St. Marie-le-Mauderne, a fictional village of 150 people in rural Québec has fallen on hard times. The inhabitants, once proud fisherman, have been reduced to living off welfare, lining up one by one at the post office to collect their monthly checks. When a multinational plastics company using a federal tax incentive agrees to open a factory in St. Marie, the tiny hamlet is compelled to seek a full time resident doctor to serve for five years to fulfill the company's insurance obligations.
After repeated attempts, a doctor is found when a policeman (a former Mayor), finds an illegal substance in a car he's pulled over and sentences the driver Christopher Lewis (David Boutin), a Montreal plastic surgeon, to do rural service in St. Marie for one year. Local villager Germain Lesage (Raymond Bouchard) undertakes to persuade Dr. Lewis to live in the village for five years by cooking up one elaborate ruse after another, which he falls for hook, line, and sinker. The villagers pretend to be enthusiastic about cricket (of which they actually know next to nothing) and admirers of fusion jazz, serve him his favorite dish at the local restaurant, and leave $5 bills in a local lawn ornament each day to convince him of the town's magic.
Unfortunately, they go to lengths of dubious morality to win him over, illegally and unethically tapping his phone to listen to his conversations to find out how they can please him but all they learn is that he likes women's feet and beef stroganoff. They even force the bank manager to approve a loan of $50,000 to bribe the company manager. While Seducing Doctor Lewis has its charms and will put a smile on your face, it pushes all the formulaic buttons and lacks the bold imagination of the superior English and Irish comedies on which it is modeled.
After repeated attempts, a doctor is found when a policeman (a former Mayor), finds an illegal substance in a car he's pulled over and sentences the driver Christopher Lewis (David Boutin), a Montreal plastic surgeon, to do rural service in St. Marie for one year. Local villager Germain Lesage (Raymond Bouchard) undertakes to persuade Dr. Lewis to live in the village for five years by cooking up one elaborate ruse after another, which he falls for hook, line, and sinker. The villagers pretend to be enthusiastic about cricket (of which they actually know next to nothing) and admirers of fusion jazz, serve him his favorite dish at the local restaurant, and leave $5 bills in a local lawn ornament each day to convince him of the town's magic.
Unfortunately, they go to lengths of dubious morality to win him over, illegally and unethically tapping his phone to listen to his conversations to find out how they can please him but all they learn is that he likes women's feet and beef stroganoff. They even force the bank manager to approve a loan of $50,000 to bribe the company manager. While Seducing Doctor Lewis has its charms and will put a smile on your face, it pushes all the formulaic buttons and lacks the bold imagination of the superior English and Irish comedies on which it is modeled.