Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005)
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Movie review
From Time Out London
It all begins to go wrong for eight-year-old Zachary (Emile Vallée) when his father (Michel Côté) finds him in a dress. After a relatively idyllic young childhood in Québec – during which the strains of being younger brother to a tearaway, a jock and a bookworm are offset by the extra indulgence his purported gift for healing earns from an already doting mother (Danielle Proulx) – a persistent shadow is cast by dad’s suspicions that Zac might be ‘un fifi’. Then mum goes and gets pregnant again and he isn’t even the baby any more. Fast-forward seven years to 1975 and teenage Zac (Marc-André Grondin) is agog over Ziggy Stardust and his cousin’s boyfriend – not, he insists, that that makes him gay. Meanwhile family life hasn’t got any more harmonious…A zippy, colourful coming-of-age tale, ‘C.R.A.Z.Y.’ is buoyed along by engaging central turns, iconic pop tunes and a pleasingly meandering narrative that can take a left turn at a family wedding and wind up in the Sahara. Loosely based on the life of a friend of the director, it has a firm grasp of period and a plausible sense of the stubborn ructions and unarticulated tendernesses of family life, but also offers fantastical touches apt to its religiose undertones: during one especially stultifying midnight mass, Zac messianically levitates to ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. Indeed, the film is better at conveying the ecstasy of music – a passion shared by father and son – than the particular tribulations of growing up fifi, a subject with which, like Zac himself, it is notably reluctant to engage.
Author: Ben Walters
Time Out London Issue 1861: April 19-26 2006
Cast & crew
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Cast: Michel Côté, Danielle Proulx, Marc-André Grondin, Émile Vallée full cast
Genre(s): Drama
Duration: 125 mins
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.
What do you think?
Post your review now