Seducing Dr. Lewis

by Dr. Lin Zucconi

I rented  a really cute little French Canadian comedy called (in English) Seducing Dr. Lewis. This little movie is somewhat reminiscent of the English comedy of about ten years ago The Man Who Went up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain. Again we have a very small village that must put some big lie that is for the huge benefit of the town. In Dr. Lewis, we have a tiny (Dr. Lewis, when he first encounters it calls it "microscopic") village perched on the edge of a small island in the Atlantic Ocean three hours by boat from the nearest hospital (or anything else - cell phones don't work).

The hamlet used to be a fishing village. But fishing is dead and all the men are unemployed (except for the gullible dimwit with a good heart that runs the local bank one-man office). There is however the prospect of luring a factory to the village. But the contract requires the down to have a resident physician. Hence the rub.

When the village mayor gives up and moves to Montreal to become a police man (and encounters plastic surgeon Lewis speeding and lets the good doctor bribe him out of the ticket by going off to his village for a month - unplausible but this is a silly comedy), a townsman who has been living off two welfare checks (one of a man everyone but the government knows is dead) declares himself the new mayor. He is determined to get a town doctor so everyone can work in a factory and rid themselves of the shame of living off welfare.

This scruffy middle aged ex-fisherman writes letters (in bright green envelopes so they won't be missed) to every doctor in Quebec asking him/her to come to the village. This doesn't work (lots of funny scenes of various doctors' reactions when they read the letter), but when Dr. Lewis shows up the town is ready. Determined to make him love their town and think it is perfect, they pretend to love cricket and wiretap his phone to learn all of his wishes and desires in advance (the one local restaurant always miraculously has just what the doctor tells his girlfriend in Montreal he'd like for dinner).

Of course, it gets more complicated (the factory owner wants a bribe of $50,000 - where is the town to come up with this?) and there are plenty of cute funny scenes of the townspeople listening in on the doctor's phone calls and trying to satisfy the factory owner when he shows up.

Very cute, very funny and very satisfying.