aGLIFF Soundpost.com Feature Film Director Award: Jean-Marc Vallee's C.R.A.Z.Y.

Jean-Marc Vallée's award-winning C.R.A.Z.Y., recipient of accolades at film festivals around the world (Gijón, Toronto, Vancouver, Boulder), recently garnered yet another laurel: the low-budget indie comedy-drama was given the "Soundpost.com Feature Film Director Award" at the 19th Annual Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF), which continues through Sunday.

It's fitting that Vallée, who uses both sound and music to extraordinary emotional effect, will be receiving a $130,000 grant from Soundpost.com. The prize money will provide for music licensing, legal, and supervisory fees for his next productions. This is no small gift, considering that C.R.A.Z.Y. was made for around $600,000.

Beautifully written by Francois Boulay, C.R.A.Z.Y. is a visual poem that has as its focus the young Zachary Beaulieu (Marc-André Grondin), second youngest of five brothers growing up in the Canada of the 1960s to 80s. Any of us blessed (or cursed) to have lived during the same era will easily recognize, not without a slight wince, the brown, orange, silver, and turquoise palate typical of the times. From inside the living room of the Beaulieus (French for "beautiful place"), we're presented a portrait of a family, a country, and a world as they grapple with issues of drugs, religion, and sexuality. Punctuated by the music of Patsy Cline, Pink Floyd, and David Bowie, the film's edits and pacing artfully follow the music's crescendo and diminuendo as the larger Anglophone universe subtly seeps into the rarefied Francophone world of the film.