Cinema Carrefour. Hall no.6. A matinee first showing. As I was a bit early, I had time to read a critic of the movie in Voir. The article was praising the movie and I was dying to see it. The lights were dimmed and after a long series of commercials, the movie finally started. First sequence was in black and white. Montreal by night. The Place Ville-Marie spotlight: the city's lighthouse, was scanning the sky like a prison guard. The first fireworks hit me right in the heart. During one hour and 25 minutes, I took every punches until the final blow. This picture is built like a chain of DNA, like a non-stop spiral. Taking me through every phases of emotions and finally knocked me out and left me in a real state of shock. I felt physically sore. It had happened to me once before at the movies. As I wrote it previously, Cinema and I, is a great love story. I am a good public. I do not laugh very much but I cry a lot. Sometimes I am scared. My heart pounds easily. Cinema ! What an invention! A portal to the unknown. Without limits of place or time, which opens up the universe into an infinite possibility of creativity. Wow! But feeling a physical pain after watching a movie, that's rare. ALIEN was my last trauma. I came out of the movie and my forearms were hurting because I was holding on to my seat to tightly. After Being, it was like I had received a tremendous blow on my solar plexus. I could hardly breathe. I had just saw something unique, a move that nobody has dared to accomplish, a step never reached. I was proud. Very proud. Imagine a Quebec movie. I saw it twice, always overwhelmed.

And for the following month, five times a week, twice a day, I had recalls of this extraordinary emotion. I was working in a hospital, near Lafontaine Park on Sherbrooke east street, downtown Montreal. Not as a nurse but in the office. To get to work, it was a long drag: two hours of public transportation. An hour bus ride from Ste-Rose/Laval to Montreal and then the metro from Henri-Bourassa to Sherbrooke Station. Nine stops, and of course, same route to return home, kind of a modern Way of the Cross.

One metro station out of three was showing a giant poster featuring the promotion of Being. A beautiful billboard, like the one on the front page of this page, measuring 5 by 8 feet. All in black with Roy's face fading away, the blood stained knife blade, on the left. What a billboard! A thundering billboard that broke down the monotomy of the underground scenery. It pumped me up, again it was like watching the Way of the Cross through a stained glass window. Jammed in the metro car with other 8 to 5 slaves, squashed against the doors when returning home at 5 PM, forced to watch some stupid ads, the waves of people, the darkness of tunnels and then all of a sudden: my poster appearing in a flash as brilliant as the sun. This was reminding me of a black and white scene when Yves was running in the Metro, the escalators, the soft sound of the train departing for the next station, and like me, also prisoner in the city. The reality and the imagination being fused. My mind obsessed by counting the number of stations backward, had gone somewhere else. Sometimes I found myself smiling, just like when you think of an old friend, someone with whom you had shared unforgettable moments. Artists do not know how much happiness they sow. Not only comedians but also the boy or the girl who was responsible for the poster; it was my Prozac for a whole month. Thank you guys! You made my days at the end of this winter of 92.

I bought the video and I must have watched it fifty times. I know all the lines by heart, and I never get tired from watching the movie. It is always beautiful and has become a fetish. Of all my cinematographic experience, it is my number one. When I say that to my friends, the all sigh, shaking their heads saying:"Of course, it's Roy". All my friends know my craze for his work and I don't hide it. Besides, because it is Roy that plays Yves, I must add the following.

In November 1985, when René-Daniel Dubois' play was first created at the Quatre-Sous Theater, critics has drawn my attention. I almost went to see the play and I would have loved to see it. But it did not happen. Only 7 years later, did I discover the play with cuts in the script but additions in the picture. Cinema will allow you to express certain thing which are impossible to do on a stage. Cinema is then taking a revenge. Losing one dimension, the actual bodily presence, it must create a new which are the strength of feelings and a new environment. In Being, anguish and death are reproduced marvelously. The atmosphere leaves its print in your body and soul. Especially when watching the movie for the first time. I felt like living with death. Everything had stopped. A complete cut-off from life. Time was suspended and although life was there I was unable to touch it. The movie truly gave me this feeling. Death as an inevitable, intangible, irreversible event, the impossibility to go backward. Yves is prisoner of his own drama. After he committed his crazy and liberating gesture, his action had engaged a movement of inexorable situations, leading to a non-stop process of emptying the hourglass. I felt close to this character. It was excessive. He had more courage than me, pushing right to the end. I do not mean the crime itself, but I mean the allegory. Pushing to the extreme of the soul just like Roy, who was carried by Beaudin, went all the way in his role.

I am not the only person to recognize this. In Saturday, February 22 1992, La Presse published a 2 pages publicity insert, listing the names of critics praising the movie. If you want to check this, you could refer to the above copy of the newspaper, sections D10 and D 11. On page D 10, on the left side, a black and white picture of Roy, taken from the movie, standing up, full figure. He looks far away, his shirt unbuttoned, everything around him fading away. It is titled: Bigger than Roy on the Big Screen, you drop dead! following more comments:

" Yes, Roy Dupuis is a great actor! Being at home is where the part and comedian meet; Roy has a presence, physically and morally, but to hold on as he does in his role, you certainly need more than that. Someone needs a rare quality in order to abandon and still to control himself that will give like to a great role." Eric Fourlanty, Voir

"Roy Dupuis wins by KO. Being at home with Claude reveals all his talents. Like a fighter in the ring, he charges like a bull, with all his strength: it is a grand fight." Richard Martineau, Voir

"Roy Dupuis dramatic intensity is a pure performance." Elie Castiel, Séquences

On D11, you'll find half a page of comments on the movie official poster. Here are a few:

"To see Being...and die of love! Passion in its brutal, absolute, universal state. A cry-movie with poignant pictures with crazy rhythm." Huguette Roberge, La Presse

" A most beautiful movie, not necessarily québécois, that I've seen in my life." Jean Barde, Radio-Canada