Avec un grand A

A health problem causes a business leader to think about what will happen to his company after his death.

This short film showcases the city of Montreal on a summer's night. What was once a small Indian village is presented as a pot-pourri of contrasting sights and sounds. It is North America's second largest port and, after Paris, the world's largest French-speaking city. With its warehouses, offices, homes, clubs and amusement parks, the city serves as a bright backdrop for a happy couple out on the town.

Wealthy sportsman James Haggin (Walter Pidgeon) lives on a Quebec estate called Wintapi. Émile Fornet (Émile Genest), handler of Haggin's hunting dogs, and Émile's wife Therese (Janette Bertrand), Haggin's cook and housekeeper, live in a separate house on the estate. To start a line of top show dogs, Haggin purchases the winner of the Montreal Kennel Club show, an Irish setter named Red.

A little girl wittness the death of her mother- expressly killed through negligence by the woman supposedly nursing the invalid mother back to health. The coniving nurse in turn marries the child's father thereby taking the dead woman's place and becoming the little girl's stepmother. After unwisely revealing to the stepmother that she knows the reason for her mother's death; Aurore is abused by her stepmother who hopes that in torturing the child she can keep her silent. The father, who is absent during the day farming the land, closes his eyes or refuses to believe his new wife is abusive when confronted by the sight of his miserable burnt and beaten child.

One of Canada's talented directors, actress Micheline Lanctot expresses an effective, engaging approach in this simple, poignant drama about Armand (Jocelyn Berube), a handyman with one problem romance after another. The quiet Armand settles into Montreal after his wife has left him and before long, he continues the momentum when an ill-considered liaison with a nubile woman ends on her insistence. Next, Armand gives his heart to a frustrated housewife, though this decision is hardly well thought out. In the meantime, a gay man who rents out a room in his apartment has unfulfilled longings directed at the unsuspecting handyman. L'Homme a Tout Faire won a Silver Medal for "Best Picture" at the 1980 San Sebastian Film Festival.