Film Reviews

C.R.A.Z.Y.

• Rating:
• Director: Jean-Marc Vallee.
• Starring: Michel Cote, Marc-Andre Grondin, Danielle Proulx, Pierre-Luc Brillant.
• Details: Canada/ 127mins (15s).

Growing up in the 60s and 70s, Zac (Grondin) knew he was never going to be like his older brothers. When he was born (revived after being clinically dead), he was dropped on his head by rebel Raymond (Brillant) and developed a gift of feeling people's pain. Favoured by his father Gervais (Cote) – a Patsy Cline fanatic - Zac enjoyed the sheltered life until he was caught wearing his mother clothes at the age of seven; after that, Zac was looked upon with homophobic suspicion by his father. Zac always suspected that he was gay but never gave into his urges and even got himself a girlfriend but when he hit his teens, an obsession with 'that fag' David Bowie rekindled his father's doubts. At his bookish brother's wedding, the matter comes to the fore when Zac is spotted in a car with his cousin's boyfriend. It's obvious that director Vallee really enjoyed himself shooting this picture as he lets loose to include every aspect of his prepubescent and teenage years. His characters are beautifully written and thoroughly rounded. Everyone of them have their own personality that is totally human. The father is a comic foil until his temper gets the better of him, the oldest brother pushes the self-destruct button at every opportunity offering no redemption and Zac captures the audience through his ordinariness. Prone to flights of fancy akin to Walter Mitty (Zac imagines the whole church congregation singing along to The Stones' Sympathy For The Devil while he floats into the air Christ-like), Zac is a mass of contradictions as he battles with his true feelings; he beats up a boy at school for coming onto him but fails to stand up for himself when his older brothers pick on him. C.R.A.Z.Y veers from laugh out loud comedy to heartbreaking poignancy without missing a beat.

Review by Gavin Burke