Mireille Dansereau's very first film, produced on her own account (using the Beaulieu camera lent to her by Michel Brault) and secretly edited at night on the NFB's Moviola, depicts the dreamlike walk of a young girl whose inner monologue is revealed through a voice-over. Emerging from a family home nestled in an upscale neighbourhood, the young girl meanders, seemingly enticed by the murmur of her own thoughts, in search of an alternative perspective on the world, spaces capable of unraveling this connection. Her imagination embraces a lofty idea of love, to which she clings by means of a Prince Charming who, as a counterweight to images of the alienating family, appears out of nowhere. The figure is perfectly ridiculous, and joyous in its being. It introduces a distance into the calculation of these images of a melancholic young girl, an ironic smile that tears through the sentimental tone of the aspiring ballet dancer in love who refuses to wither here. The flute gradually gives way to the ondes Martenot. The images distill sweet dreams tinged with anxiety; the fantasy reveals its polar structure, between desire and fear. And the young girl "wishes to set fire to all these houses."

To the immersive technique of the voice-over, which foreshadows in audiovisual means the themes of self-determination and the crucial act of listening to one's own voice (and, by association, of ideas, the "personal is political" of the following decade), responds a space that branches out, inhabited by a dance that turns into a run. The young girl gradually sheds her classical body to descend the mountain and run with no purpose other than to somatically inhabit the present—a figurative motif that will be fully realized in Dream Life. The "running" of this young girl in One Day… thus initiates a cinematographic reflection on emancipation through the imagination, thanks to a loose and natural mechanic that lovingly binds itself to the moving image.

Maude Trottier
Editor-in-Chief, Hors champ magazine