Louis the 19th: King of the Air Waves

Louis the 19th: King of the Air Waves (Malofilm) is a Quebec film that's all about TV-land. When Louis wins a contest that puts him on TV twenty-four hours a day, both he and his mother are over the moon. We see Louis sleeping, eating and even falling in love, all accompanied by a huge video camera on the shoulders of various camera operators. Like most of us, Louis has watched a lot of TV so he knows how to behave there, and so does his mother: she turns making dinner for Louis into a cooking show. When Louis walks down a street, people who live there are so excited that they don't know whether to look out the window to see him in person or just keep watching their own neighbourhood go by on the television screen. The public loves it, and as I lay on my couch laughing out loud I could feel the attraction of seeing inside another person's life, even one as obviously made-for-TV as Louis's. Of course, when Louis begins to reveal a few of the human appetites and needs that are so much a part of real life and so little a part of TV life, the producers and the public are outraged. But even as I watched Louis ride off into the sunset, I knew there were people out there who would be trying to identify the country road and the little stone bridge he was crossing as landmarks in their own neighbourhood.