C.R.A.Z.Y. - 4th May 2006

I thought this film was fantastic. Not least due to principal actor Marc-André Grondin, who was so incredibly good-looking I could easily have watched him reciting the Shipping Forecast over and over for seven hours straight. Although he did have a tendency to keep turning into Our Craig off of Corrie in my head, which was slightly off-putting.

Anyway, C.R.A.Z.Y. was so called because they were the initials of the five sons of the Beaulieu family, seemingly named after their father's favourite Patsy Cline record. (This struck me as a rather stupid idea; what if they had another son? What if the father was a fan of the song Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins? What then?)

This all tied in with the idea of family; we follow the chief protagonist Zac, the fourth son, as he searches for his place within the family, through which he is able to find his place in the world. I thought the Beaulieux were a lovely depiction of a typical French family. (I know they were Canadian but to me they seemed typically French). The father was a sterotypical patriarch, Zac's brothers conformed perfectly to their own sterotypes and the mother was charged with keeping the whole family together using a combination of gentle persuasion and ironed toast. It was through Zac's relationships with his family members that we saw him grow up.

As a coming-out story, however, it never really got going. Apart from a few implied incidents there was nothing to suggest that Zac was ever exploring his homosexuality; indeed, much more time was spent concentrating on his fantasies about his (female) cousin and his eventual girlfriend. By the same token, we never see Zac 'coming to terms' with his homosexuality himself. Even after his argument with his father at the wedding, during his time travelling, we see him struggling with the whole homo thing and this is never actually resolved (apart from a tacked-on happy-ever-after ending.)

One of the most striking things was the fantastic use of music and especially fashion to evoke the era. You could almost pinpoint the exact date just from the clothes Zac was wearing - from Ziggy Stardust to Sid and Nancy, it helped to place Zac's story very firmly within a specific timeline.

Unfortunately, it went on a little bit too long. Zac's trip to Jerusalem and wanderings in the desert were never really explained and just felt a little pointless. Sometimes the arty editing and effects jarred a little, a lot of the time they weren't at all necessary. The fantasy sequences were sometimes a little annoying but managed to be more Amelie than Ally McBeal.

I also have to mention the language: Canadian French is weird. How they managed to pronounce the word fête to rhyme with 'eight' was just strange. I sometimes had no idea what the actual French was, even when I was reading the subtitles.

Anyway, despite the slightly incomprehensible bits it was a lovely film that really rather touched me. 7.75