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C.R.A.Z.Y.  

Directed by: Jean-Marc Vallée
Written by: François Boulay
Starring: Michel Coté, Marc-André Grondin, Danielle Proulx, Pierre-Luc Brillant, Émile Vallée, Mariloup Wolfe, Jean-Louis Roux, Francis Ducharme
Country: Canada

Three cigarettes            

Reviewed by Hal Gray

Tout Au Contraire.

C.R.A.Z.Y. is a very rich and satisfying film judging by the smiling faces of people walking out of the theatre. It does have depth and is wonderfully evocative of the ‘60s and ‘70s in its neo-cultural portrayal of social issues and music.

Zach, the fourth of five boys, is born on December 25, 1960 into a Quebecois family. He’s the sensitive one of the pack, but not weak nor without the ability to stand up for himself. He knows there’s something different about his sexuality, but he can’t quite pin it down. His mom thinks he’s different because of a special gift she presumes him to have—the gift of healing.

As Zach grows up, he and his family come to terms, or not, with his sexual orientation. The one in the most denial is Zach himself. When he starts to figure it out, uber-heterosexual Dad shows us a thing or two about denial.

It would be unfair to categorize C.R.A.Z.Y. as only a gay coming-of-age story. It’s also an accurate depiction of suburban ‘60s life. Narrated by Zach (different actors play him over the years), it’s a very funny film in the early years as Director Jean-Marc Vallée pokes fun at the bad side of being born on Christmas Day and some Catholic mumbo jumbo.

However, it is clear from the very beginning that the ‘story’ is about Zach’s gayness and how he and Dad are going to work it out. And this is a weakness. We know that the ‘story’ is how the relationship between son and father will work out and knowing the narrative line kills much of the tension. We also have to wait over two hours to see it happen.

So, I’m not so crazy about C.R.A.Z.Y. as everyone else. What I see is a two hour and ten minute film that could have run twenty to thirty minutes shorter. A very funny movie slowly, but surely, turns into a turgid melodrama of epic proportions. About the time I was eagerly anticipating a conclusion, a twenty-year old Zach goes off to Israel and gets lost in the desert and taken in by a Bedouin family. It’s that age old bugaboo in story-telling: someone has to go somewhere so that they can prodigally come back.

I understand this is a very personal story for the director and writer, but they needed to take a step back from this one. Anyway, the final resolution is a long, long time coming and then it ends in a merely anticlimactic hug.

Another problem for me (and I think only me), was the great wash of music that inundated most scenes. In fact, Vallée is quoted as saying that he wanted to fill a double CD, but they couldn’t afford all the rights they needed. For some songs it felt like a music video, whole songs sung or lip-synched by Zach (David Bowie’s Space Oddity) and Dad (several Charles Aznavour tunes.) Dad’s impersonation of Aznavour is very funny. Michel Coté is a close likeness of the French warbler. But the fourth time around the joke’s maudlin, if not trite.

The cast is a treat, starting with Coté and strong performances by Marc André Grondin as the older Zach, and Danielle Proulx as the self-sacrificing mom. Mariloup Wolfe has a good turn as Zach’s friend and then spurned girlfriend. (It’s a wonder that the whole cast didn’t die from lung cancer as someone’s smoking in every scene. Did we smoke that much in the ‘60s?)

The last word, an explanation of the meaning of the acronym C.R.A.Z.Y., is a bit too cute for words.

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