C.R.A.Z.Y.

Saw this movie yesterday with Uncorrected Proofs .
Zac is one of five Quebecois brothers growing up in the sixties and seventies in Montreal. He's gay and spends most of the movie trying to change into something he's not in order to please his macho dad. It's all handled with a great deal of humour. It's not a subtle film but that doesn't really matter. Early on little Zac purposely breaks his father's favourite (and rare) Patsy Cline record and spends the rest of the movie trying to replace it. When at last he does, the moment is ruined by a family tragedy. All the characters are stereotypes but appealing ones nonetheless.
I loved the film, partly because I grew up in Montreal in the fifties and sixties among people very much like the Beaulieu family. It was a time when the Catholic church still had great sway and the priest involved himself in the lives of his parishioners. I remember my mother's indignance when Father Henri, on an unsolicited visit to our home, asked her when she planned to have more little "nuns and priests" for God. She had her hands full with three children born in 2 1/2 years and had just discovered either birth control or self control and was not about to let a priest dictate family size to her. I found the church scenes in this movie to be uncomfortably familiar.
Too bad this film didn't get a foreign-language Oscar nomination which would have brought it wider attention outside Canada.