Our first look at her is at a park on a summer day. The shot is framed as if we’re sitting right next to her and her friend Janie Lapierre on a bench. We get an up-close view of Marie-Lise’s bubbly personality as she laughs and makes jokes, but the conversation is about death. The comedian shares that her nurse recently told her that she’s taking her situation well in spite of being young. “Young?” she says with a grin.
As her hair is being washed, she recalls that during her last visit she was experiencing hair loss because of her cancer therapy, but, without skipping a beat, she frames her current situation in a new light, joking that she “might as well be sick with hair!” The director shared with me that, when she proposed her idea for the film to Chouinard, she was originally confident about the project, but as the weeks went by she started to become doubtful.