So Claude Fournier set about painting or sculpting his own view of the modern Quebec man. He wanted also to make a film about desire, and deliberately chose the two Quebec men who, according to him, possessed the whole range of masculine charms that appealed to women at home and abroad. The romantic, androgynous type. The other, a bit more of a chauvinist. The gentle dreamer with the blue-green (pers) eyes. The dark-eyed pragmatist. J’en Suis is also and above all a film about man as an object. It’s an original idea. The exploitation of male beauty, the beauty of one man. Claude Fournier confessed to having filmed Roy as if he were a woman. A very beautiful woman. Roy was cleverly transformed into Dominique by Fournier’s Machiavellian dream machine. He became the perfect hermaphrodite. In order to create him and to allow him to express his dual polarity, the director gave his hero the face of an angel, subtly modified by being overlaid with Roy’s own features. Although he wanted to show a macho, virile male at the outset, it’s difficult to picture Dominique as a construction worker or a biker built like a tank … Dominique is an artist. He’s an architect and a collector of art objects. He’s sophisticated, elegant and romantic. As regards his physique, Claude Fournier has allowed him his masculine attributes because it is the blending of the two sexes, the two societies, the two cultures that is tantalising and which piques interest. So Fournier does not hide the breadth of his shoulders, his well-developed chest, his muscular arms and legs and everything else …. Roy is a handsome man, we readily agree with that. What is fascinating is what the technicians have done with his face. This is worth a detour and warrants dwelling on the subject. What they have done with Roy’s face, and what he himself has done. The makeup and hair styling are a work of art. The makeup artists and hair stylists have done an immaculate job: Roy’s face is extremely well proportioned, a perfect triangle. From the front, at an angle, in profile, from any direction, a master work, a labour of love. Fournier has entrusted the face of his muse to the experts, asking them to create a living work of art. A pliable, almost illusory material, Roy’s face becomes the supreme iconic model of the great Italian artists of the 15th and 16th centuries. There are many examples throughout the film, whether reproduced consciously or not. If you browse through the catalogues of art history of the Renaissance, you will find Dominique in the works of Botticelli, Botticini, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphäel, to name but a few. He is everywhere. The faces of the men who acted as models for the Italian masters of this age evoke the same gentleness as Dominique’s features do. A triangular face softened by the line of the jaw. Roy's jawline seems less pronounced. The long curly hair enhances the overall softness, promoting and accentuating the elegant and chivalrous image. The smooth forehead, the straight nose, the almost feminine mouth.

The eyes are wonderful. For this reason alone, Dominique could not have been played by any other actor. Life has blessed Roy Dupuis with a look that you rarely encounter in real life. A gaze that is magnificent not just because of the extraordinary composition of its colour, but by the force and power that drives it. All life and death is there. All the passion, all the tragedy, the merest sensation. For an actor it’s the supreme instrument. Especially in the cinema where the camera picks up the slightest detail of body and soul. I’m not an expert on the subject of the dimensions of the eye, but his eyes seem to me to be a little bigger than average. Enough to give him a look more like that of a child than an adult. Adding to their uniqueness is their colour: the amazing unpredictability of the shades of ‘pers’ eyes. The brightness of the green and the depth of the blue. Then all the other shades: the watery green, very pale with the almost black circumference of the iris, the soft grey with the bluish tint, the greener grey with the glint of slate. It’s possible to create an atmosphere with his look alone. Pers in the extreme. Pers to lose yourself in and to bask in. The third power of his look is Roy’s ability to control its light and intensity. He has a look that’s often disturbing because it’s too intense, too pronounced. As a small boy he would easily have got everything he wanted on account of those eyes. He has eyes that make you forget everything else. He has almost too much power in those eyes. He imparted to Dominique all the qualities of gentleness and abandon that are in his look. Never those more piercing ones he is capable of. I remember an interview which took place in September 2001; a short interview but one in which it was impossible to take your eyes off his. Roy’s eyes were fixed on the person he was speaking to, who was opposite him, very close. His look was alert, lively.Green eyes in all their splendour and magnificence. While he was answering the questions, on two occasions he stepped up the emotional charge of his visual power. It’s like a grapnel, an eagle’s talon… a look that spears like a harpoon. One that sets off in the person who gazes into his eyes a delicious dizzy turn, a shiver that runs down the spine and invades the whole body. It’s astonishing and thrilling at the same time, like the downward curve of a roller-coaster. Happy are those who move in his circle and now and again gaze on this marvel. That is why he is in a league of his own. When you can make the person opposite you dizzy merely by increasing the intensity of your look in this way, you possess a unique magic, an inestimable wealth. It’s also for this reason that you have to take advantage of the times when you can escape his gaze. In order to be able to read the whole of what he is portraying. When his look is not present, cut off by some ploy of the camera or because he closes his eyes for a host of reasons, at last it’s possible to read his face better. You are better able to pick up the internal part of his characters which his look too often robs us of, because of the fascination that its omnipresence generates.

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