His trademark was an
unforced affinity with outsiders, as he discussed in a 2019 interview: “I have
a thing for underdogs, where they’ve got to put up a fight to find their
happiness and to find themselves. I guess I had to do it, too, and that’s why…
I like to present and defend these characters and serve these projects.”
Yet he also became
beloved of the Hollywood A-list, coaching Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto and
Reece Witherspoon to awards recognition, and affording stars a rare creative
freedom on set: working office hours wherever possible, shooting quickly and
allowing performers to determine their own movements rather than putting them
through a punishing rehearsal schedule.
Vallée’s empathetic
streak shone through his international breakthrough feature C.R.A.Z.Y.
(2005), a period coming-of-age saga centred on a teenager wrestling with his
identity amid the turbulence of the 1960s and 70s. A raucous crowdpleaser, it swept
the Canadian Oscars, the Genies, taking home gongs for Best Film, Direction and
Screenplay, before repeating its success at the French-Canadian equivalent, the
Jutras.
It was distributed widely,
convincing producers Graham King and Martin Scorsese to hire Vallée to direct Julian Fellowes’ script for The
Young Victoria (2009). Though respectfully received, this heritage drama
proved a little bruising for its maker: “I lost creative control… We weren’t
making the same film, and it took a while before I realised.” Nevertheless, it put
Vallée on the Academy’s radar, as the film earned three Oscar nominations,
winning for Sandy Powell’s costume design.
After returning to Canada
for the overdetermined weepie Café de Flore (2011), Vallée rallied with Dallas
Buyers Club. Inspired by the story of Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), a
Texan rodeo rider who smuggled illegal drugs from Mexico to help himself and
his fellow AIDS patients, it found eccentric, lively rhythms that shook off
worthiness and stuck with viewers and voters alike. It won three Oscars, for
McConaughey, Jared Leto (as Woodroof’s transgender associate Rayon) and make-up,
and was nominated for a further three, including Best Picture.
Attempts to repeat that
film’s success were mixed. The following year’s Wild was a sturdy study
in self-determination: adapted by Nick Hornby from a memoir by Cheryl Strayed,
who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail alone after her divorce, it landed Oscar nods
for star Reece Witherspoon and Laura Dern in a supporting role. Yet Demolition
(2015), with Jake Gyllenhaal as an investment banker sent spiralling after his
wife’s death, disappeared without trace commercially. And a planned Janis
Joplin biopic, starring Amy Adams, unravelled amid legal battles.
With superhero movies
muscling thoughtful, adult drama out of the multiplex, Vallée pivoted to
television, directing two high-profile HBO series in quick succession. The
first season of Big Little Lies was polished, illustrious, Emmy-winning
soap; the Adams-starring Gillian Flynn adaptation Sharp Objects was more
formally daring, its intricate editing (by Vallée himself, under the pseudonym
Jai M. Vee) unpicking the layers of childhood trauma repressed by its reporter
heroine.
Despite that show’s
psychological complexity, Vallée insisted he was still the same creative he’d
always been: “I love it. You know, I’m like a kid on a set, a kid playing with
a huge toy and having fun.”
Vallée was born on March
9, 1963 in Montreal, the youngest of two brothers. A tempestuous teen (“I had a
little bit of an anger management problem, and would kick and put holes in the
walls”), he found an outlet in music, DJing at parties with records his father,
a radio-station programmer, had brought back to the family home.
He studied business
management and film at the Collège Ahuntsic, before making his name as a
director of music videos and short films in his early twenties. His feature
debut came with the legal thriller Liste noire/Black List (1995), a
major Quebecois hit; Mario van Peebles, whom Vallée had directed in a 1996
episode of the anthology series Strangers, then recruited the promising
tyro to direct Los Locos (1997), a standalone Western sold as a sequel
to van Peebles’ earlier Posse (1993).
At the time of his death,
he was attached to direct Gorilla and the Bird, based on Zack
McDermott’s memoir about a lawyer who experiences a psychotic break. He was
also developing a feature about John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
A keen motorcyclist in
his spare time, Vallée received the Order of Canada in 2017 and the National
Order of Quebec in 2020. Interviewed in 2019, he confessed to wondering about
the future: “We’re here for 80 years—90 if we’re lucky. Particularly us men.
But the trip is amazing. Life is precious. I’m 56 and I’m starting to go, '80?'
That means I have 24 years left. Why are we here? Why am I doing this? Art has
this… power, maybe? To change mentalities or maybe change perceptions. ‘Oh, I
see this differently because I saw this thing. I was told this story.’”
He is survived by Emile
and Alex, his two sons with the writer Chantal Cadieux, whom he married in 1990
and divorced in 2006.
Jean-Marc Vallée, born March 9, 1963, died December 25, 2021.
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