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chattering class believe filmmakers should sy—Yves' whole protective carapace of "opening up" scenes, which feel as only depict well-adjusted citizens sipping toughness and self-sufficiency—Bluteau's though they were shot and inserted as aperitifs on bistro terraces. skin appeared to turn transparent. Half- afterthoughts. In one the detective goes Leolo is a departure from the chic naked, skeletal, he seemed to glow from out into a courtyard garden for a smoke, angst flicks, inane comedies, and histori- within, his final confession scene a jerk- in the second he calls home to say he'll cal mini-series that have tended to domi- ing, spurting orgasm of pain that left the be late, and we get thirty seconds of a nate screens since the eighties. audience as spent and trembling as Yves. generic wife cooking generic dinner in a Lauzon may not be a hunter who always For reasons that can only be guessed generic suburban kitchen. hits his target but at least he gets out into at—box office? fear of foreplay?—in his None of these maladroit ploys can dis- the woods. screen adaptation of Being at Home tract us from the fact that it's not the Maurie Alioff writes film reviews, with Claude director Jean Beaudin has play that needs opening up, it's the cen- articles, screenplays, and is a con- put the orgasm up front. We're barely tral performance. Casting as tributing editor to Matrix. settled into our seats before it's duck and the hustler Yves was a shrewd commer- cover time. In a snazzy, sixties-inspired cial decision for the Quebec market, but black and white prologue, complete with a lousy one otherwise. Dupuis is a big FEATURE jaggedy, rhythms-of-the-city editing and handsome bit of beefcake with a exceed- a retro-jazz track, we see Yves picking up ingly modest dramatic range who's made Claude, a soft-spoken, ostensibly straight a name for himself by shucking his shirt university student, in a park. Soon it's at frequent intervals in Les Filles de clear their relationship has progressed Caleb and Scoop. beyond the purely commercial. The cam- As the tempestuous Yves he's a master Claude era hovers over their first romantic dinner class in ineptitude, pouting, posing and for two: pasta, candlelight, wine glasses. swaggering, all textbook attitude and pin- The meal quickly forgotten, the pair are Directed by Jean Beaudin, from the origi- up boy narcissism with no emotional naked on the floor. Yves the hustler's on nal play by Rene-Daniel Dubois, pro- depth. In interviews Dupuis—who, like top, but Claude the client's fucking him, duced by Louise Gendron in association Beaudin, has made clear that he is their climax a hot gush of sperm and with the Nation Film Board of Canada, straight—has retailed his meticulous blood. with Roy Dupuis and . research for the role, which included a Distributed by Alliance Releasing. That's the first ten minutes—stylish, daring foray into 's gay village. sexy and sensational, Genet meets Dupuis doesn't inhabit the role of Reviewed by Aitkin Will MuchMusic—leaving us only another 80 Yves—he's a tourist taking snapshots. minutes of post-coital chatter to slog A better director might have gotten hen Quebec playwright through when our natural inclination is more from Dupuis, but Beaudin seems to Rene-Daniel Dubois' Being to roll over and go to sleep. have encouraged a crashing literalness. Wat Home with Claude Beaudin keeps the decibel level high When Yves speaks of unbearable longing opened at Montreal's Theatre de enough to render slumber impossible, and loneliness, Dupuis hugs a convenient Quat'Sous in 1986, the buzz was imme- however longed for. Faced with a deliber- column. When Yves speaks of war as a diate. Partly about the play itself—in ately claustrophobic play, he could have metaphor for love, Beaudin puts the French, but with an English title, about a tried to open it up—bring in other char- sound of distant drums and rifle fire on street hustler who kills a trick—but acters, new settings, maybe a subplot or the soundtrack. mainly about the performance of two. Or—and this is the riskier choice— What's most remarkable about Being Lothaire Bluteau in the role of Yves the he could have gone with the claustropho- at Home with Claude is how Rene- hustler. bia, heightened it, made it inescapable. Daniel Dubois' lines somehow survive Nothing Bluteau's done on film, in Inexplicably, Beaudin—whose credits this cinematic mangling. Despite the Jesus de Montreal or Black Robe, comes include J.A. Martin: Photographe, worst efforts of Beaudin and Dupuis, the close to suggesting his astonishing range. Cordelia, and the popular Quebec TV central conception of Yves stalks the As a detective takes Yves over and over miniseries Les Filles de Caleb and movie like the ghost of yearning. He's an the events leading up to the murder—-the Scoop—has tried to do both. After the implacable creation, this hustler who's let cop knows Yves is the killer, he just pulsing prologue he confines Yves and down his guard just once, letting another doesn't understand why he killed— the detective to an interrogation room, man into his life and then into his body. Bluteau was feral, cunning, opaque, a but it's a big ornate room, vast enough Yves' defenses have been penetrated, and stringy nocturnal creature slinking about that the director can manipulate the cam- all for a dream of love he knows has no the stage (you could almost see a tail era like a third character, letting it crawl chance of lasting—Claude's educated, lashing out behind him), dangerous and the room to no particular purpose, set- the wrong class, he may not be gay. The seductive, teeth bared, tongue darting. ting it at every odd angle but the right only way Yves can keep that dream of But then, as the cop doggedly stripped one. love alive is by killing his lover—that way away layer after layer of lies and fanta- And then there's the problem of two there's no denouement, no fading of pas-

3A TAKE ONE IV

SHORT

Directed, written and produced by Isabel Fryszberg and Tracy Thomson. 16mm/video, 26 mins.

Reviewed by Pat Thompson

wo first-time filmmakers ponder on how people create joy in Ttheir lives. An exotic storyteller strolls city streets collecting many opin- ions, watching children and adults at play, and listening to varied music. Snippets of interviews with a baker, "I fell in love with the dough. I treat it kindly," a gifted wheelchair dancer, a serious Jungian therapist, are but a few of THE VISIT: Valerie Buhagiar and Michael Hogan. Company. Flora, one of Joe's the people talking "joy." During filming, Photo: Vera Frantisak two children interviewed in the fathers of both filmmakers died, and the 80s, recalls his return to they managed to work out their grief and sion, no smiled excuses. Murder also lets Woodstock accompanied by an Indian sense of loss before the camera. We see Yves preserve that essential image of him- guide and a four-dog team, and also a them realize that to experience true joy self as inviolable. splendid vacation in Bear Creek, Yukon, one must be open to suffering. The film Seeing all this on screen, it's hard not when she was 11-years-old. A friend is perhaps a little too "crammed with wonder: where's Fassbinder when we vividly recollects Joe as "an opportunist incident," but for a first effort, it's lively, really need him? who never let a chance go by." full of movement music from klezmer to Will Aitkin is a Montreal film crit- At the start of World War 1 Boyle was soca and Celtic, and makes you want to ic, novelist and former contributor to 47, but he raised and paid for a 50-man smile. the original Take One. machine gun unit. By 1917, he ended up in Romania, close to starvation, yet he offered help to Queen Marie of SHORT SHORT Romania. Her daughter, the Crown Princess, interviewed in a convent, remembers that Boyle ran an intelligence network, and in spite of the German occupation, wore his uniform at all Directed and written by Markham Cook, times. Boyle, whom the Crown Princess with Michael Hogan, Valerie Buhagiar called "the greatest Romanian I have ever and Earl Pastko. 16mm/video, 26 mins. known," suffered a stroke at 51 and lived Reviewed by Pat Thompson Directed, written, produced and narrated his final years in England, poor in health by Pat Patterson. 16mm/ video, 23 and in finances, dying April 14, 1923. mins. Queen Marie sent a headstone from man visits a grave in a small Romania for the grave. Boyle's body was town cemetery. Afterwards he Reviewed by Pat Thompson returned to Woodstock where he was Agoes to an ordinary cafe which finally buried in the family grave, with is on the point of closing, but the young Col. Joseph Whiteside Boyle: full military honours, on June 29, waitress lets him in. A spiky conversation "King of the Klondike," 1983—60 years after his death. ensues and unravels a skein of memory "Saviour of Romania," was A short but fascinating glimpse of an on each side. The man's friend was a tal- born in Toronto, 1867, and raised in unknown Canadian character, neatly put ented but undiscovered artist whose Woodstock, Ontario. Boyle was a colour- together with archive material and per- grave he had just visited. The waitress ful entrepreneur who started gold sonal reminiscences. knows who the man is—she was the prospecting in 1899, and later formed Pat Thompson is the editor of Film artist's girlfriend. In this small setting, the Canadian Klondike Mining Canada Yearbook. with the aid of flashbacks, the tension

36 TAKE ONE