>>REVIEW
C.R.A.Z.Y.
STARRING Michel Côté, Marc-André Grondin and Danielle Proulx
DIRECTED BY Jean-Marc Vallée
Opens Friday, November 25
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C.R.A.Z.Y. is, simply put, a film about the often maddening desire for acceptance and love from the ones we love the most and those least likely to give it.
The coming-of-age film from Quebec filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée is a wonderfully complex tale, delivered with depth, beauty and humour. Zac Beaulieu (played by Marc-André Grondin in his teens and Vallée’s own son, Émile, earlier on) is the second youngest child in a family of five boys. Sensitive and precocious, his fondness for pushing strollers and knack for calming crying babies, among other things, defies his father’s definition of traditional male-female roles.
The morsels of love and attention that Zac’s father (Michel Côté) offers his son are scant and Zac misguidedly attempts to use these as a gauge to define who he is. Born with a discoloured lock of hair, Zac’s deeply spiritual mother believes he is gifted and she is a constant, warm star of protection for her son.
Set against a soundtrack of ’60s and ’70s rock that helped to define a lost generation, including Bowie’s Space Oddity, Vallée’s nostalgic nuances spanning
these decades are perfect in their detail, making middle-class Montreal in the 1960s a most appealing, wild and culturally infused backdrop. C.R.A.Z.Y. is, at its heart, a story about the fundamental struggle to accept oneself. In this way,
Zac must come to terms with his own homosexuality before his father can.
Each character in the film (some more developed than others), is searching for his specific place in the world, be it through rebellion, conformity or a combination of both. It is through the ordinary Beaulieu family that C.R.A.ZY. explores this exceptionally universal theme. C.R.A.ZY. is a film that magically encapsulates the tenacity of the human spirit and the rich familial relationships that act to shape the human psyche. |
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