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MOONAGE DAYDREAM Kaleem Aftab speaks to French Canada’s very own Gael Garcia Bernal, the extremely hot MARC-ANDRE GRONDIN.
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INTERVIEW
Twenty-one-year-old Marc-Andre Grondin is the golden boy of Quebec cinema. His ocular charm is immediately apparent; swept back hair, dewy hazel eyes and the physique of a 400m hurdler. He’s also got a lively character and on both occasions that I’ve met him, in Venice and Marrakech, he has been making the most of his moment in the sun. Born in Montreal, he started acting at the age of three in an orange juice commercial. His stock was recently raised when C.R.A.Z. Y, in which he stars as a sexually frustrated teenager, broke box office records in Quebec and picked up Best Canadian Film at the Toronto Film Festival.
Grondin first worked with writer/director Jean-Marc Vallée when he was just 11, in the short film Les Fleurs Magiques (Magical Flowers) in 1995. Their birthdays are only two days apart and nearly every year since then, they’ve had dinner in their favourite Lebanese restaurant to celebrate. Yet the young actor claims that he still had to fight for a part in his old friend’s film: ‘One day I found out that he was doing the casting for C.R.A.Z. Y. He sent me the script and it was so well written. It was a way longer version than it is. All the songs were already in it and you were able to see the cinematography as you read the script. It’s not often you get a character as complete as Zachary. He’s a regular kid, who wants to be like everyone else. He doesn’t want to be different, which is why he doesn't want to accept his sexual orientation. For me it was the worst audition ever. Auditions are tricky and I didn’t think I gave enough. So I left the audition and began mourning.’
Luckily Vallée had more faith. His look was also exactly what the director wanted. Vallée says of Grondin: ‘He’s like a sexy Sid Vicious. There is also a touch of Gael Garcia Bernal about him.’ They met again and it was here that Grondin feels he charmed the director into giving
him the role he so coveted.
Zachary is a child of the 705. He dreams of being a glam rock star and dresses like Ziggy Stardust. It was a mindset that was easy for Grondin to jump into. ‘I was raised in a really musical family, my father worked in a rock station, and he interviewed the Who and bands like that. I’m a big rock fan myself and was listening to Bowie and Pink Floyd in school.’ One feels that it is through music that Grondin gets the most joy in life. ‘l play drums in a rock band and also for an Anglophone folk band.’ His is the beat that will soon be making our hearts skip.
I C. RAZ. Y is at Cinewor/d Fienfrew Street. Glasgow and Cinewor/d, Edinburgh from Fri 27 Apr. See review, above.
'zsi'ig Canadian star Marc-Andre GrOndin The family poiitics played Out here '.'.'rl| be familiar to any one bOrn into a large Clan but what makes CRA Z Y special is the way Vallee borrows from all the right places iSirk. Capra and Hughes mostlyr. While Vallee and FranQOis BOLlla‘, 's warmly ‘unn', screenplay dances gently around questions of sexuality. loss and fraternal responsibility. things are greatly upholstered by a Superb 708 SOundtrack and a familiar spattering of cliches as old as Moses. A fabulous guilty pleasure. iKaleem Aftabl
I Cinewor/(l Renfrew Street. Glasgow and Cineworld. Edinburgh from Fri 27 Apr See interview. left.
COMEDY DRAMA JUNEBUG (15) 106min 0000
Home may be where the heart is. but for mild mannered handsome boy George (Alessandro Nivola) it is where he reverts to type. Having crossed the union line for the first time since his marriage to urbane art dealer Madelaine (Embeth Dawdtz) on an outsider art requisition trip, he takes her to his family home in North Carolina. Welcoming home the besotted couple are his prickly mother Peg (Celia Weston); his taciturn father Eugene (Scott Wilson): his angry younger brother Johnny (Benjamin McKenzie) and Johnny's very pregnant and innocently garrulous wife Ashley (Amy Adams). As Madelaine begins to conduct protracted negotiations with insane local artist David Wark (Frank Hoyt Taylor), Ashley and Amy find a connection. despite their initial city mouse/country mouse juxtapositions.
Phil Morrison's decidedly quirky. off beat familial drama works as both chamber piece and cosmic meditation. Underwritten and carefully paced. Junebug constantly seems on the edge of collapse into indie cliche and yet it never does. Giddied along by themes as universally uncomfortable as they are familiar (such as personal reinvention, cultural snobbery. the tactility of strangers. madness and creativrty). Morrison's film still manages to avoid a retreat to philos0phical pretence (imagine Woody Allen or. God forbid, Bergman making this film).
With near flawless performances from all involved and a sublimely pitched soundtrack by Yo La Tengo. Junebug is a small joy that marks the arrival. in Morrison. of a very serious new talent. (Paul Dale)
I Cineworld Benfrew Street, Glasgow and Cinewor/d, Edinburgh from Fri 14 Apr. See feature, page 42.
Film
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13-27 Apr 2006 THE LIST 45