by KEVIN LAFOREST

It's been 10 years since Jean-Marc Vallée directed his local box-office hit Liste noire, starring Michel Côté. After that he turned his attentions to the States, where he worked on several TV and film projects, including Los Locos - the sequel to Mario Van Peebles' Posse. Now he's back with C.R.A.Z.Y., a wonderful new French Canadian feature that reunites him with Côté.

In what may be his most moving performance ever, Côté plays Gervais Beaulieu, a loving but old-fashioned father of five boys: Christian (Maxime Tremblay), Raymond (Pierre-Luc Brillant), Antoine (Alex Gravel), Zachary (Marc-André Grondin) and Yvan (Félix-Antoine Despatie).

The film spans two decades, which isn't that long when you consider how long it took to complete C.R.A.Z.Y.'s final cut.

"It took 10 years to make this putain de film à la merde," says Vallée, who's calling from his car. "We sweated blood but we loved making it. The people around me got fed up with hearing me talk about it, but we finally got it done."

While it often seems like the Quebec film industry is overly compartmentalized - pumping out either big commercial movies or small auteur cinéma - C.R.A.Z.Y. is a rarity, combining the best of both worlds. On one hand, it's clearly a personal, character-driven piece, but at the same time this family saga is also a wildly entertaining crowd-pleaser.

"My take on cinema is that I want to give a good show," says Vallée. "I love telling a story visually, with plenty of freeze-frames, slow-motion, montage, sound and music. This medium allows for magic, fantasy and even mystique."

Though the film is mostly based on the memoirs of co-writer François Boulay, who grew up with four brothers and a father who couldn't accept his homosexuality, Vallée mixed in a lot of his own history. For instance, just like Zachary, Vallée was born with a discoloured lock of hair, which his mother believed meant he had a gift from God.

Along with addressing spirituality issues, Vallée had two other priorities in making C.R.A.Z.Y.: to get enough shooting days to realize all his ambitious ideas, and to raise enough money to secure the very costly music rights for what sometimes feels like an all-out musical.

"I wrote this film while listening to song after song," Vallée recalls. "I worked hard to integrate them into the screenplay, using them to advance the plot, define characters and set moods. To me, these tunes [Pink Floyd's "The Great Gig in the Sky," Bowie's "Space Oddity," etc.] are also like prayers."

As with his protagonist Zachary, who expresses his alienation through classic rock, Vallée was once a lost young man himself - until he met Yves Lever, a former Jesuit who taught a film class at Ahuntsic.

"I was studying administration and I was very unhappy," he remembers. "That man really changed my life."

I mention to Vallée that Lever was one of my teachers too, and played a role in me wanting to write about film. Now here I am talking to one of his former pupils. "Isn't it crazy how these things happen," I say to him. Vallée agrees.

C.R.A.Z.Y. opens Friday, May 27

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