Quebec Famil

 

BY CHRBTOPHER BYRNE

C.R.A.Z.Y.

Directed by
Jean-Marc Vallée
2005, 127 minutes,
French with English
subtitles

TVA Films

“ want to be like everyone
else,” says Zachary Beaulieu
(Marc-André Grondin) to his

neighbor, the mystic-cum-Tupper-

ware saleslady Madame Chose

(Helene Gregoire). “Thank God,

you’re not” is her reply. C R.AZ.Y.

 

is a film about struggling with
change and accepting the truth:
about wanting to change the way
things are to the way things we
think they should be. A father does-
n’t want his son to be gay. The son
doesn’t want to have asthma. His
mother wants him to accept that he
has a healing gift. Acceptance takes
time, and along the way, the parents
and the five brothers of the Beaulieu
family resist what is happening to
them.

Zachary is the fourth of the five
brothers; the movie opens with his
birth on Christmas Day in 1960.

l The rest of the movie follows

Zachary to just past his 20th birth-
day and traces how he and his fami-
ly grow and change, while also giv-
ing the audience a pop-culture les-
son about life in Montreal in the
1960s and 19705. .
Zachary narrates a story that

focuses on his relationship with his
parents, Gervais (a superb Michel
Cote) and Laurianne (Danielle
Proulx), and one of his older broth-
ers, Raymond (Pierre-Luc Brillant).
Early on, Laurianne determines,
with the help of Madame Chose,
that Zachary has a healing gift and
is able to heal burns and staunch
bleeding just by thinking about it.

Zachary doesn’t like being different.
He isn’t a brain like his brother
Christian or a jock like his brother
Antoine. He has asthma. He’s musi-
cal. He wets the bed. As he grows
older, the animosity between him
and Raymond, a biker and a small-
time criminal, erupts violently.

Zachary fights his sexuality. He
beats up the class fag (and then has
sex with him). He dates a neighbor-
hood girl, thus pleasing his father.-
He becomes infatuated with his
cousin’s boyfriend, who is,a profes-
sional mambo dancer. Biker brother
Raymond, meanwhile, becomes a
heavy drug user and is always
broke. At Zachary’s 20th birthday
party, they come to blows with their
father stuck in the middle. (The
scene is dubbed over
with opera, which was
both funny and quite
apt.) Fed up, Zachary
runs away to Israel where
he faces his healing gift,
his sexuality and his
asthma.

C RA Z .Y. is in
French and for that rea-
son will not receive a
wide release outside of

val circuit. This is unfor-
tunate because it is an
important film on many
levels. It is a film about a
gay man and his family
produced for a main-
stream audience. It is
important as a Quebec
film because it has uni-
versal appeal. Many
Quebec films deal with aspects of
culture that are unfamiliar to out-
siders. C RAZ.Y., because of its
theme, as well as its basis in North
American popular culture, is accessi-
ble by a wide audience. In fact,

Quebec and the film festi-

C .RAZ.Y. was selected as Canada’s
entry for the upcoming Academy
Awards. It is significant that
CRAZY. earned $5 million at the
box office by mid-September. This is
nothing by Hollywood standards, but
a major milestone for Quebec film.

I overheard a couple leaving the
theater saying, “I wanted something
uplifting. This wasn’t fun.” It isn’t a
fun movie, no. Both times I saw it, I

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was moved to tears, as were others.
Uplifting, though, is another matter.
A constant theme of the movie is
something like the Golden Rule,
namely, if you do the right thing,
others will do the right thing, too.
For the characters in this movie, that
lesson takes a while to learn, but
eventually they do.

C.RA.Z.Y. is a film about love
and acceptance, with some fantasy

 

and a killer soundtrack (Patsy Cline,
Charles Aznavour, David Bowie,
The Rolling Stones) thrown in.
Director Jean—Marc Vallée told the
CBC “it’s really about anyone who’s
different.” For this reason

C .R.A.Z.Y. deserves a wider audi-
ence: If viewers who perceive them-
selves as different, but not gay, can
relate to and identify with the char-
acters, the queer community can
gain new allies.V

Christopher Byrne is self-employed
and splits his time between Vermont
and Montreal.

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