by JOANNE LATIMER

After musing on necrophilia in Post Mortem, what could director Louis Bélanger possibly do to trump his sensational film debut? We've been suitably shocked and impressed. Will he take us deeper into the lives of some craven misfits?

Not at all. Instead, he takes us home. His second feature, Gaz Bar Blues, is a tribute to his roots. It's a touching drama about a family who runs a gas station in smalltown Quebec. Bélanger lathered a lot of love on this picture, but keeps sentimentality safely at bay.

Gaz Bar Blues offers a straight-up, linear narrative - which is the last thing you'd expect from Bélanger. We meet the family patriarch, Boss, who is played by Quebec superstar Serge Thériault, and the three disgruntled sons who help him run the gas bar. There's no mother figure, but a wise sister (Fanny Mallette) drifts in and out of the plot as a much-needed sounding board. The charm of this film is in the believable details: how Boss gets his sons up at 4 a.m. with relentless calls from the kitchen; how the grudges between the sons grow increasingly bitter; how the local tossers at the gas bar help raise the kids; and how the ailing Boss is terrified by his kids' wanderlust.

Réjean (Sébastien Delorme) is the most reliable son, but he goes MIA first. He heads to Germany in 1989 to photograph the fall of the Berlin Wall, leaving his father flummoxed. The second son, Guy (Danny Gilmore), is the musician of the family who keeps running away to play his harmonica with bands. The youngest, Alain (Maxime Dumontier), has a nervous tic, throwing an imaginary baseball all day. This tic drives Boss to distraction, but he's glad for the company.

The white elephant in the room is Boss and his struggle with Parkinson's disease, which plagued Bélanger's late father. Thériault's movements and tremors are masterful, never going over the top. We see the frustration of a man no longer in control of his motor skills and unable to keep his sons close at hand. Bélanger's story is small and crisp, with desolate shots of airplanes crossing open skies. While this is no docu-drama, we feel the weight of truth behind the domestic bust-ups and resolutions. Now we're suitably impressed, awaiting his third feature film.

Gaz Bar Blues opens Friday, Sept. 5

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