Jacinthe Potvin

4 and a half is the apartment occupied on the Plateau Mont-Royal in Montreal by a young couple. It is a chronicle of the daily life of the urban reality of 25-30 year olds: love, friendship, humor and tenderness.

Dramatic reenactments of major Quebec trials.

In the 1950s, young boys were placed in orphanages and endure harsh and austere living conditions. As a united group, they supported each other and survived despite bullying, hardship and little hope for better days. While these children were doing their best to survive, they had no way to suspect the secret dealings between the clergy, the medical profession and the government that will inevitably seal their fates. The institution faced with a precarious financial situation, the solution is to transform the orphanage into a psychiatric institute in order to obtain additional subsidies. To demonstrate the need for this change in status, the orphans are labeled as insane by the very people who took them in to help them. While their future as orphans was already precarious, they become prisoners of an asylum system from which they have little hope of being able to free themselves even as they grow older.

The story takes place during the colonization of the Laurentian region in Quebec towards the end of the 19th century (approx. 1885-90), near Sainte-Adèle. An unscrupulous man, Séraphin Poudrier, dominates the small community using his wealth. Mayor of the village, he will marry Donalda Laloge, after her father, unable to repay his debt, gives her to him in marriage. Donalda, a gentle and submissive woman who was promised to the handsome Alexis Labranche, rather, he will live his life according to the wishes of this petty and contemptuous miser, but will never let his situation get him down.