The Mirage

The picaresque and touching story of the politically incorrect, fully lived life of the impulsive, irascible and fearlessly blunt Barney Panofsky.

Jean-Marc is a man without qualities living in times that are out of joint. His wife and children ignore him; he's a mid-level government functionary in Montreal doing his job without care. He has an active imagination of sexual conquest, but his only real feelings come when he visits his aged mother, whose health is failing. When his wife leaves abruptly to work in Toronto, Jean-Marc sets out to reorder things with his daughters, his social life, and at work. In a world that at best is a farce, does he stand a chance?

A young French Canadian, one of five boys in a conservative family in the 1960s and 1970s, struggles to reconcile his emerging identity with his father's values.

Four very different Montreal university teachers gather at a rambling country house to prepare a dinner. Remy (married), Claude (a homosexual), Pierre (involved with a girlfriend) and Alain (a bachelor) discuss sex, the female body and their affairs with them. Meanwhile, their four female guests, Louise (Remy's wife of 15 years), Dominique (a spinster), Diane (a divorcée) and Danielle (Pierre's girlfriend) are spending the time at a downtown health gym. They also discuss sex, the female body and, naturally, men. Later in the evening, they finally meet at the country house and have dinner. A ninth guest, named Mario, who used to know Diane, drops in on the group for some talk and has a surprise of his own.