C.R.a.Z.Y

C.R.A.Z.Y. by auteur director Jean-Marc Vallee was the sleeper Quebec hit of 2005. It was selected as Canada's official entry at the 2006 Oscars for Best Foreign Film, but it wasn't nominated. Therein lies the rub. While Quebec was embracing the film enthusiastically, the film's international (including English Canadian) acceptance was limited even though it won the prize for the best Canadian feature at the Toronto International Film Festival in the fall of 2005 and then Best Film and Best Director at the Genies in March 2006. The film was released in DVD a few weeks later. Compared to Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasions of a few years ago, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, C.R.A.Z.Y. represented another dimension of Quebec culture--one that was more claustrophobic, insular, and self-contained. While Arcand's film represented the globalized (the film begins in London) and continentalized Quebec of the 21st century, Vallee's film never leaves the confines of Montreal, except at the end when its hero travels to North Africa to find himself, before returning to his Quebec roots. Spanning the years from 1960 to 1980, the film is a coming-of-age saga of a gay youth trapped in the confines of working-class francophone society. This is precisely the period in which Quebec underwent historical changes, first with the Quiet Revolution and then the government of the Parti Quebecois, which lost the first sovereignty referendum in 1980. While the story may have symbolic ties to the general outline of socio-political change (progress is achieved in the end), the film itself is lost in the depths of a private family crisis and how a homophobic father is reconciled with his son's sexual orientation. Of late Quebec cinema has undergone an incredible renaissance to which C.R.A.Z.Y. has contributed. In 2005 Quebec films earned 26 per cent of that province's box office. In 2004 it was 21 per cent. In 2003 it was 15 per cent. These are historic highs. In the 1990s, when Quebec films occasionally reached 10 per cent of box office, there was reason to celebrate because this was double the norm. In comparison, the box office for English-Canadian films in Canada was a paltry 1.6 per cent in 2004 and only 1.2 per cent in 2005. Historic melodramas (Aurore) set in rural Quebec have been a fundamental part of the phenomenon. There is now less dependence on the comedy factor of the Les Boys series, which were a big contributor to attendance in the 1990s. The end result is that Quebec films have been a financial hit a home and an artistic hit at the Genies for the past few years. Even when they competed against Cronenberg, Egoyan and Mehta this year they won. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] C.R.A.Z.Y. is part of a wider Canadian phenomenon in which English Canadian cinema has failed to make inroads in terms of audience, while its Quebec twin has consolidated and expanded its cultural acceptance on its home turf. This acceptance has led to a significant increase in budgets for Quebec films. For example, C.R.A.Z.Y. had a budget of $7 million, featuring soundtracks from The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, David Bowie and Charles Aznavour. In the 1990s such a budget would have been considered an extraordinary extravagance in most cases. While the film's popularity is evident in its grossing over $5 million in Quebec box office, its artistic achievement is more of an issue. It certainly doesn't measure up to the amazing accomplishment that was Jean-Claude Lauzon's Leolo in 1992. While that film looked at family life from the perspective of a disturbed adolescent filled with surreal fantasies, C.R.A.Z.Y. dips into the same stream of consciousness but rather than using the poetic language, surrealist imagery, and disturbing music of Lauzon's masterpiece, it seldom strays from overt realism and catchy narrative. The occasional magic realism sequences in church or the beatific mirage in the desert are a bow to Leolo, but the main storyline deals primarily with mistaken impressions and false interpretations that highlight the confused and traumatic nature of father/son and mother/son relationships. …

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