Script File

Les belles couleurs

A young girl's perspective is challenged beyond expectation when she and her friends encounter a neighbourhood adversary.

Les belles couleurs is a coming-of-age tale about sexuality and a woman's worth in mid-90s Montreal.

  • Camille Hollett-French
    Actor, Filmmaker
    https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3844586/
  • Project Type:
    Short Script
  • Number of Pages:
    11
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Language:
    English, French
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Writer Biography

Please visit my IMDb page for a full list of film awards: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3844586/

Camille is a Trinidadian-Canadian actor and filmmaker originally from Montreal. Her first film Hush Little Baby won the Craghoppers Film Prize of £20,000 at the Discover Film Awards (UK) and she is an alum of Women In the Director's Chair and the Whistler Film Festival's Producers Lab, two of Canada's premiere incubator labs. Her film FREYA (2020) has won more than 25 awards including the Jury Prize and Audience Choice Awards at the Etheria Film Festival (2022), Audience Choice Awards at Fantasia (2021) and Newport Beach Film Festival (2021), and it won five of its nine nominations, including Best Director and Best Short Film at the Leo Awards (2021). Her short "doc-meets-mock" ENDOMIC (2021) was her second film to premiere at Slamdance, this time for the first Unstoppable program, for filmmakers with visible and non-visible disabilities. Her latest short film Spark was just funded by Canada Council for the Arts and it has screened at numerous festivals including Portland Film Festival and Imagine Science (NYC).

After getting kicked out of theatre school, Camille received a diploma in journalism. Writing was her first foray into the arts as a child and film was her first love, so she’ll always pursue the making of movies by whatever means she can. She and her chef partner drove from Toronto to Vancouver in an old renovated shortbus then lived in it for two years with their cat so that they could fund their film series Her Story (In Three Parts).

Being a mixed-race creative, Camille loves to make films about the duality of life and people in the peripherals of the typical viewpoint. As an actor, you can catch her on shows The Twilight Zone, Motherland and Big Sky.

Camille is in development funded by Canada Council for the Arts with her first feature film, a psychological horror called Man In Pieces, which she's aiming to shoot in early 2024. She plans to keep making her short films Les Belles Couleurs, Mother's Milk and Sins of Our Mothers until then.

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Writer Statement

There are certain aspects of young womanhood that are rarely explored--the strength, the complexity, the beauty of adolescent friendships between young women at a shifting point in their lives when they begin to navigate their sexuality. Unpacking these complicated understandings is what I strive to do with “Les belles couleurs.”

This story is inspired by true events. It’s what happened to me as a kid. One of the first times I received male attention was when a 55-year-old man tried to pick me up as a pubescent child. And I liked it.

“FINALLY, he’s not just automatically going after my 'hot' friends—he wants ME!" That was my immediate reaction, which is so so so fucked up because A—predators do that on purpose. They prey on the "weak" and I was clearly the one who'd be left on the sidelines and B—I was taught to think and feel that way. I was taught that my value should be based first and foremost on my physical attractiveness, how desirable I was to other people, my “fuckibility,” a concept I was familiar with even at that young age. My reaction was most definitely hinged on these elements, even if it meant people could seriously harm me, when I knew it, they knew it, everyone knew it. Somehow, though, it was still a win for me. So I ask, how fucked up is that? If it weren't for my "savvy" friends, I could have ended up in a ditch or sold, never to be found, all because of what was ingrained in me as "worth."

This is not an isolated incident. This still happens to girls everywhere who are just trying to discover their womanhood.

Through the exploration of contradiction, and in a place as unique and vibrant as Montreal, I’d like to address the very real aspect of female sexuality as four children begin to understand it in relation to their peers, the hands meant to feed them, and most importantly, themselves.