Seducing Doctor Lewis (2003)

The group which saw this film with me loved it. It has a perfect combination of humor (sometimes slapstick, sometimes subtle), emotion, and suspense as to what will happen next. The scenery is also well done. Highly recommended--you won't be sorry you saw it! You are really pulling for the town to succeed, and the ending is great. You never know what happens till the very end. Each character has a unique and funny personality--kind of like all of the characters in Mayberry. The women in the town are especially hilarious, mainly during the scenes in which they listen to bugged conversations with the doctor to find out what things they need to do to make him fall in love with the town. A very cute film!

When I got this film home with it's English title of Seducing Dr Lewis, I was unaware that it was subtitled. (Didn't say anywhere on the DVD sleeve and even the shop owners were unaware).However, within minutes of watching, I was hooked. The plot may seem predictable but the film is immensely enjoyable and you soon forget it's subtitled. There is a gentle humour and a great feel about the location.It is set in the Quebec area of Canada and filmed on a small island which was once a thriving fishing village. The plot revolves around the need to replace the old industry to revitalise the town.Very enjoyable. One for a quiet night in.

Being out of Canada for 13 years, it was quite refreshing to hear the country folk, accent and all. I am originally from Montreal, born there. My partner brought me this delightful film...it was so entertaining, very charming. It talked about human nature. It showed how sometimes lies have a purpose in life, to help the people who do them and are well-meaning. The recipient can benefit.I felt transported into the little town. The fishing episode was hilarious, among other parts. The movie plot was great, acting superb, landscape amazing. The lives of folk on Ste-Marie-De-la-Mauderne are simple but more rich than that of city dwellers, always rushing along with no substance at times or always in competition for material riches in life.

Quebec has no ocean coastline but there are fishing villages on waters that have seen better days. In "Seducing Dr. Lewis" such a village is Francophone St. Marie-La-Mauderne, a tidy place where every able-bodied man who used to fish is on the dole and living, with their families, rather comfortably. Houses are neat and have stereo systems, late model TVs, microwaves and coffee makers. This movie could unwittingly start an exodus of unemployed Americans to our northern neighbor.The village seeks economic rejuvenation through the building of a plastics factory. Alas, the company's insurers require a resident physician and this place hasn't had a doc in a husky's age. No doc, no revitalizing plant.So they plot to get one, the leader of the cause being an elder named Germain Lesage (Raymond Bouchard). He's a clever guy - the only denizen who cashes two relief checks every month, one for himself and the other - made out to a dead guy - for himself too.A traffic violation encounter by a doctor possessing marijuana with a cop who once was the village's mayor gets Montreal plastic surgeon Christopher Lewis to sojourn with them for a month with the hope that he'll sign a five-year contract. Lewis is dewy-eyed David Boutin. Why a specialist who lives with a gal named Brigette (we never see her but her silky voice on the phone suggests he made a mistake leaving her in the big city) would want to spend a month as a G.P. in a godforsaken former fishing village isn't a director's carefully wrought mystery: it's a big hole in the story, a very unnecessary one.The villagers try to seduce Lewis by hook and by crook. Hook features most prominently a sham cricket team, Germain having somehow learned before his arrival that the medico is a fanatic follower of that sport. Crook is tapping his phone so as to learn more about him (anywhere in the U.S. that would be a felony. Not in Canada?).There's nothing unpredictable about the evolving and increasingly wild campaign to win the doctor over. What makes "Seducing Dr. Lewis" fun is the sprightly cast and the beautiful scenery. Boutin and Bouchard are fine in their roles. This is a welfare-dependent community as Disney would imagine it. So what.Will Dr. Lewis remain? What do you think?The director is Jean-Francois Pouliet who has a nice imagination but needs to learn to tidy up his stories. There's a difference between mystery and muddle.Subtitled, of course.8/10 (because I'm in a beneficent mood)